Preamble

The House met at a Quarter before Three of the Clock, Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair.

PRIVATE BUSINESS.

Harrogate Corporation Bill (By Order), Second Reading deferred till Wednesday.

Oral Answers to Questions — INDIA.

ARMY RECRUITING.

Mr. DONNER: 2 and 3.
asked the Secretary of State for India (1) the number of combatant ranks recruited in India during the last three years in all the provinces of India, respectively, excluding Burma;
(2) the number of men recruited during each of the last five years in territories outside India, and the countries or territories from which they are drawn?

The SECRETARY of STATE for INDIA (Sir Samuel Hoare): I am asking the Government of India for the information required, and will send it to my hon. Friend when received.

TANGASSERI.

Duchess of ATHOLL: 4.
asked the Secretary of State for India whether he has yet received any expression of the views of the Government of Madras on the subject of the proposed cession of Tangasseri to Travancore; and whether he will instruct the Government in India to consult the Madras Government as to whether a plebiscite can be taken to ascertain the views of Tangasseri residents in regard to the proposed cession?

Sir S. HOARE: go, Sir. I have nothing to add to the reply which I gave to my Noble Friend's question on the 4th February.

Duchess of ATHOLL: Is it not the case that on the 3rd December the Government of India said that they were awaiting the report of the Government of Madras on this question; and is it not possible at an early date to ascertain the views of that Government?

GOVERNMENT CIRCULAR (PUBLICATION).

Mr. THORP: 6.
asked the Secretary of State for India whether he is aware that a confidential circular of the Government of India, Home Department Political, dated 23rd November, 1934, addressed to all local governments and administrations, is in process of being published verbatim in the public Press in India; whether he is aware how this circular came to be disclosed; and whether he proposes to take any and, if so, what steps to prevent the publication of the
rest of the circular and any recurrence of similar disclosures in the future?

Sir S. HOARE: I have nothing to add to the remarks made on this point by the Home Member of the Government of India during the debate in the Legislative Assembly on 21st January, of which I will send my hon. and learned Friend a copy.

ORISSA (BOUNDARIES).

Mr. MORGAN JONES: 1.
asked the Secretary of State for India whether the Government accept the recommendation of the Joint Select Committee with regard to the boundaries of the proposed new province of Orissa?

The UNDER-SECRETARY of STATE for INDIA (Mr. Butler): Yes, Sir.

YUGOSLAVIA (EX-HUNGARIAN CITIZENS).

Mr. RHYS DAVIES: 7.
asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether, in order to prevent a further increase in the number of stateless persons in Europe, any representations have been made to the Government of Yugoslavia deprecating the expulsion of former Hungarian citizens till recently living in parts of Yugoslavia which used to form part of Hungary, who had renounced their Hungarian citizenship in order to qualify themselves for Yugoslav naturalisation but have not yet received it, and who have now been expelled to Hungary by the. Yugoslav Government?

The SECRETARY of STATE for FOREIGN AFFAIRS (Sir John Simon): The concern of His Majesty's Government regarding the recent expulsions from Yugoslavia and the action which has been taken by them in this connection have been explained on several recent occasions in reply to previous questions in this House. It does not appear to be the case that these events have increased the number of stateless persons. The legal situation as regards the nationality of the expelled persons is somewhat complex, but the national status of these persons is dependent on the relevant Articles of the Treaty of Peace, and not on the recent actions of the Yugoslav authorities.

Oral Answers to Questions — LEAGUE OF NATIONS.

INTERNATIONAL OFFICE FOR REFUGEES.

Mr. RHYS DAVIES: 8.
asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he has considered the communication from the Secretary-General of the League, asking what action His Majesty's Government recommends on the report of the Nansen international office for refugees; and whether His Majesty's Government will follow the recommendation of the Assembly of the League that Governments should put at the disposal of that office credits which would enable it to settle refugees in countries which were willing to receive them?

Sir J. SIMON: I am aware of the terms of the resolution passed by the 15th Assembly of the League of Nations in regard to the report of the Nansen international office for refugees for the year ending the 30th June, 1934, but His Majesty's Government have not yet received a communication from the Secretary-General of the League of Nations of the nature referred to by the hon. Member. As soon as such a communication is received, the terms of His Majesty's Government's reply will be most carefully considered.

Mr. DAVIES: Will His Majesty's Government give a general approval to this proposal?

Sir J. SIMON: I am sure that His Majesty's Government, in common with the other Governments at Geneva, will desire to take their part.

Major-General Sir ALFRED KNOX: Will specially generous treatment be given to the Russian refugees who have been exiled from their homes for 16 years?

CHINA.

Mr. DAVID GRENFELL: 10.
asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs what steps are being taken by the League of Nations to continue the work in China begun there by its technical agent?

Sir J. SIMON: Assistance continues to be rendered to the Chinese authorities by various technical organs of the League, such as the Communications and Transit Organisation, the Health
Organisation and the Committee of Intellectual Co-operation. At its last meeting the Council Committee on technical co-operation between the League of Nations and China, while reaching the conclusion that it did not appear to be essential to appoint a technical agent for the time being, invited the Secretary-General of the League temporarily to dispatch to China the director of one of the competent sections of the Secretariat with a view to ensuring the continuance and development of the work begun by the former technical agent. I understand that the Director of the Communications and Transit Organisation of the League Secretariat has been selected for this mission.

Captain HAROLD BALFOUR: In view of the increased activity of the League in China, will the Bureau of the League ask China to pay her subscription?

NAVIGABLE WATERS (OIL POLLUTION).

Sir COOPER RAWSON: 11.
asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he will give the names of the countries, the names of their representative experts and their qualifications on oil pollution, who have been appointed by the communications and transit organisation under the League of Nations to study the problems involved in oil pollution of the seas; and can he say, approximately, when they anticipate issuing a report?

Sir J. SIMON: The Committee referred to by my hon. Friend met at Geneva in November last, and its report has already been considered by the Council of the League. The present position in regard to this matter is briefly as follows:
The Communications and Transit Organisation of the League of Nations appointed a Committee of Experts to conduct a preliminary examination into the question of the pollution of the sea by oil. This committee met under the chairmanship of Mr. Grimshaw, of the British Board of Trade, and was attended by fully qualified representatives of Italy, the United States, Denmark, France and Japan. The committee recommended to the Council through the Communications and Transit Organisation that efforts should be made to conclude an international convention for the prevention of oil pollution. The Council approved this recommendation on the 11th
January, and authorised the Communications and Transit Organisation to make all necessary preparatory studies with a view to facilitating the conclusion of such a convention. In pursuance of this resolution the Secretary-General has already circulated a questionnaire to Governments, and has asked that the replies should be sent in by the 31st May. On receipt of these replies, the Communications and Transit Organisation are called upon, in accordance with the procedure laid down for the negotiation of general conventions under the auspices of the League of Nations, to prepare a draft convention for communication to Governments. The Assembly of the League has also to take cognisance of the draft convention and to decide whether the subject appears prima facie suitable for the conclusion of a. convention. It is hoped that the Assembly will be in a position to take this decision at its next meeting. I will send my hon. Friend the particulars about the members of the committee if he desires it.

Sir HERBERT SAMUEL: Do His Majesty's Government view with sympathy the efforts which are being made to get rid of this evil?

Sir J. SIMON: Yes, Sir, with all possible sympathy. I made a statement to that effect at a recent meeting at Geneva, and have already pointed out that the chairman of the committee is an official of the British Board of Trade. Throughout I think I may claim that His Majesty's Government have pressed this matter on the attention of the other Governments.

Mr. D. GRENFELL: Will the inquiry have regard to the treatment of the oil by separators, as well as to the advantage of codifying the laws regulating the discharge of oil effluents from vessels?

Sir J. SIMON: Yes, Sir; my understanding is that both the matters to which the hon. Member refers will be included.

Captain PETER MACDONALD: Is there a representative of the Navy on the committee? They are very much interested in the matter.

Sir J. SIMON: I have given to the House the details of the proposal, and, if my hon. and gallant Friend wishes it, I will send to him, as well as to my hon.
Friend the Member for Brighton (Sir C. Rawson), a list of the members of the committee.

Sir C. RAWSON: While thanking my right hon. Friend for his reply, may I ask him if it is a fact that Japan and America are sympathetic towards these proposals?

Sir J. SIMON: I am ready to make a statement, where I can, on behalf of His Majesty's Government, but it is a little dangerous to make statements on behalf of other Governments on a technical matter such as this.

SAAR TERRITORY (LOANS).

Sir ARTHUR SHIRLEY BENN: 9.
asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs what arrangements are being made to safeguard the interests of British holders of loans authorised by the Saar Governing Commission?

Sir J. SIMON: Section 4 of the Agreement reached at Rome on the 3rd December, 1934, between the French and German Governments and the Saar Committee of the Council of the League of Nations, lays down that
5 per cent. of the total amount of Bank of France notes and other means of payment circulating in the Saar which are recovered…shall be assigned to the service of debts contracted by Saar natural or legal persons with the approval of the Governing Commission.
This covers the loans referred to, and British holders will benefit under the arrangement equally with holders of other nationalities.

Sir A. SHIRLEY BENN: If the 5 per cent. is not sufficient to cover the interest on the Sterling Loan and on the Gold Loan, what steps will be taken to protect the interests of British holders?

Sir J. SIMON: I cannot deal with that point in answer to a supplementary question, but the whole matter has been most carefully considered by the committee presided over by Baron Aloisi, and my understanding is that an arrangement has been made which is calculated to cover the matters referred to by my hon. Friend.

DISARMAMENT CONFERENCE.

Major HILLS: 12.
asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he has considered the draft articles for the regulation and control of the manufacture of and trade in arms submitted to the Disarmament Conference by the American delegation; and whether it is the intention of His Majesty's Government to support the American proposals?

Sir J. SIMON: The answer to the first part of the question is in the affimative. With regard to the second part of the question, His Majesty's Government have welcomed the American proposals and have accepted them as a basis of discussion. His Majesty's Government will have certain modifications of, and additions to, the American draft to put forward during the deliberations at Geneva of the committee, which held its first meeting on the 14th February.

AUSTRIA (HERR SCHUSCFINIGG).

Mr. MORGAN JONES: 13.
asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether Chancellor Schuschnigg is coming to this country on official business; and whether he is coming on the invitation of the Government?

Sir J. SIMON: The answer to both parts of this question is in the negative. I understand that the Austrian Chancellor and Foreign Minister have been paying a visit to Paris, and they naturally have desired to come on to London, where we are glad to receive them with every courtesy.

ITALY AND ABYSSINIA.

Captain P. MACDONALD: 14.
asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs what steps have been taken through the British Minister at Addis Ababa to prevent hostilities between Abyssinia and Italy; and whether he can make any further statement on this subject?

Sir J. SIMON: His Majesty's Minister at Addis Ababa has from the beginning with the full authority of His Majesty's Government used his good offices to promote an amicable settlement of the present differences between Italy and Ethiopia. I have no further statement to make except that I understand con
versations have begun in Addis Ababa between the Italian Minister and the Ethiopian Government.

Mr. JOHN WILMOT: Does the right hon. Gentleman propose to raise this matter at Geneva?

Sir J. SIMON: No, Sir; I think we had better see how the matter goes on. It is going on from day to day, and Geneva does not meet for a little time.

Mr. WILMOT: Would it be possible to do something in this matter before it gets too far for anything to be done?

Sir J. SIMON: I do not think the British Government can be reproached with not having shown activity, but I assure the hon. Gentleman that it is not in every case in every part of the world that it is desirable that the British Government should raise every question.

NAVAL AND MILITARY PENSIONS AND GRANTS.

Mr. SMEDLEY CROOKE: 16.
asked the Minister of Pensions whether he can state the number of cases in which the incapacity allowances to the orphan children of those who lost their lives in the Great War have been withdrawn on their attaining the age of 21, and the saving per annum to the country consequent on the stoppage of these allowances?

The MINISTER of PENSIONS (Major Tryon): I would refer my hon. Friend to the reply which I gave to him so recently as 14th February, in which I explained that no separate record is kept of the number of cases in which children's allowances cease at the age of 21.

TOURIST TRAFFIC.

Captain P. MACDONALD: 17.
asked the Secretary to the Overseas Trade Department whether steps are being taken by His Majesty's Government to attract increased tourist traffic to this country from abroad during the period of the Jubilee celebrations?

The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the BOARD of TRADE (Dr. Burgin): His Majesty's Government are not taking steps in the direction indicated by my hon. Friend, but the Travel and Industrial
Development Association which receives financial support from His Majesty's Government, is making widely known abroad, the many interesting events taking place in this country this year. There is every reason to believe that a very large number of visitors are proposing to come.

Mr. THORNE: Is someone keeping a sharp eye on the crooks who come in, better known as scientific pocket pinchers?

FISHING INDUSTRY.

Lieut.-Colonel Sir ARNOLD WILSON: 18.
asked the Minister of Agriculture whether, in view of the opinion expressed in the report of the Committee on Street Trading (Command 1624, 1922), and paragraph 52 of the report of the Food Council on Fish Prices, 1927, he will draw the attention of municipal authorities to the importance of encouraging hawkers and street traders in fish?

The MINISTER of AGRICULTURE (Mr. Elliot): The subject of the distribution of fish to the home market is engaging the attention of the Sea Fish Commission, and, as regards herring, I hope that it will, before long, be receiving the attention of the proposed Herring Industry Board. In the circumstances, I think that at this stage action such as is suggested by my hon. and gallant Friend would be premature.

Oral Answers to Questions — AGRICULTURE,

MILK MARKETING SCHEME.

Colonel BURTON: 19.
asked the Minister of Agriculture whether he can state the prices per gallon fixed by the Milk Board to be paid for milk purchased from the farmer and the prices of milk sold for domestic and commercial purposes, respectively?

Mr. ELLIOT: As the answer contains a number of figures, I propose, with my hon. and gallant Friend's permission, to circulate it in the OFFICIAL REPORT.

Following is the answer:

The following are the prices prescribed by the Milk Marketing Board for the sale of milk by wholesale by registered producers in England and Wales during the period 1st October, 1934, to 30th September, 1935:


Regional Wholesale Liquid Milk Prices (All Regions).


Month.
Price per gallon.


1934.
s.
d.


October
1
4


November
1
4


December
1
5


1935.




January
1
5


February
1
5


March
1
4


April
1
4


May
1
0⅛


June
1
0


July
1
1


August
1
1


September
1
4

The above are the prices to be paid by the purchaser for milk for liquid consumption.

Manufacturing Milk Prices (All Regions, All Months).

Milk manufactured into cheese (other than soft curd cheese and cream cheese), butter or condensed milk for export.

—
All rural districts and urban districts with a population of less than 10,000.
Population of 10,000 to 25,000.
Population exceeding 25,000.


All Regions.
All Regions.
South-Eastern Region.
All Regions except South-Eastern Region.


1934.
s.
d.
s.
d.
s.
d.
s.
d.


October
…
…
2
0
2
2
2
4
2
4


November
…
…
2
0
2
2
2
4
2
4


December
…
…
2
0
2
2
2
4
2
4


1935.










January
…
…
2
0
2
2
2
4
2
4


February
…
…
2
0
2
2
2
4
2
4


March
…
…
2
0
2
2
2
4
2
4


April
…
…
2
0
2
0
2
4
2
0


May
…
…
1
8
2
0
2
0
2
0


June
…
…
1
8
2
0
2
0
2
0


July
…
…
2
0
2
0
2
0
2
0


August
…
…
2
0
2
0
2
0
2
0


September
…
…
2
0
2
0
2
4
2
0

Under arrangements provided for in the terms of the contract, reductions in the minimum appropriate retail price have been approved by the Milk Marketing Board in some 280 areas.

The average price per lb. for the previous month of Finest White Canadian Cheese and Finest White New Zealand Cheese, less a sum of 1¾d., with a minimum of 4d. per gallon in the case of milk used for condensing for export.

Milk manufactured into—


Per gallon.



d.


Soft curd cheese and cream cheese, fresh cream or ice cream
7½


Condensed milk, or natural sterilised milk for export
6


Milk powder
4½


Tinned cream
6


Chocolate
8


Other products
9

In order to be qualified to buy milk at the above prices, purchasers must fulfil certain conditions which are specified in the contract. An addition of 1d. per gallon is made in the case of milk brought in liquid form into the Metropolitan Police District or into the City of London and used for manufacture.

For milk sold for domestic consumption, minimum appropriate retail prices have been fixed as follows:

Colonel BURTON: 20.
asked the Minister of Agriculture whether there has been any surplus of milk in excess of domestic and commercial requirements; if so, what has been the quantity; in
what areas; and what was the method of its disposal?

Mr. ELLIOT: I am informed by the Milk Marketing Board that there has been no surplus of milk in excess of domestic and commercial requirements, and that all milk handled by the board during the past year was, in fact, marketed.

Oral Answers to Questions — POST OFFICE.

PENNY POST.

Mr. SMEDLEY CROOKE: 21.
asked the Postmaster-General whether as a part of the Jubilee celebrations, he will consider the advisability of reverting to the penny post for letters?

The POSTMASTER-GENERAL (Sir Kingsley Wood): I am afraid I can only repeat the answer which I gave to my hon. Friend's question of 1st November last.

AIR MAIL CHARGES (BRAZIL).

Mr. BERNAYS: 22.
asked the Postmaster-General what is the minimum charged for an air-mail letter from Great Britain to Brazil?

Sir K. WOOD: The minimum charge on an air mail letter for Brazil for transmission via France or Germany is 3s. 6d.

Mr. BERNAYS: Why is that figure three times as much as an air mail letter from Brazil?

Sir K. WOOD: I endeavoured to deal with that matter on the last occasion.

Mr. BERNAYS: Is it not a fact that we appear to have made a bad bargain with Brazil on this question?

Sir K. WOOD: I shall be glad to discuss it with the hon. Member and, I hope, to reassure him on the point.

WIRELESS LICENCES (MOTOR CARS).

Mr. HALL-CAINE: 23.
asked the Postmaster-General what is the number of licences which have been issued up to the present time for radio sets on motor cars?

Sir K. WOOD: No record is available of the number of licences issued in respect of wireless sets fitted in motor cars. To ascertain this number it would be necessary to examine the copies kept at Post Offices of nearly 7,000,000 wireless licences; and the cost of such a scrutiny would not, I fear, be justified.

TELEPHONE SERVICE.

Mr. HALL-CAINE: 24.
asked the Postmaster-General whether, with a view to improving the existing standards of telephonic reliability and providing some compensation to subscribers in the event of unsatisfactory service, he will consider the introduction of a system whereby a suitable rebate is given for each occasion on which the telephone of a subscriber is out of order and proves to be unavailable for use when he wishes to make a call?

Sir K. WOOD: I have no reason to suppose that the existing standard of reliability of the telephone in this country calls for such an arrangement as my hon. Friend suggests.

SALE OF STAMPS (SHOPS).

Mr. HALL-CAINE: 25.
asked the Postmaster-General how many tobacco, confectionery, and other shops in the United Kingdom are now in possession of licences enabling them to sell stamps; and whether, in view of the few shops which find it worth while to take advantage of such licences under present conditions and the inconvenience to the public which arises through insufficient facilities for the purchase of stamps when post offices are closed, he will introduce new arrangements which definitely encourage such shops to sell stamps on Sundays for the convenience of the public?

Sir K. WOOD: I am sorry that the figures are not available. I am considering whether steps can be taken to encourage applications for licences generally.

Mr. RHYS DAVIES: Will the right hon. Gentleman make an appeal to the public to buy their stamps on Saturdays instead of Sundays so that shopkeepers and shop assistants may have one day's rest in seven?

Sir K. WOOD: Perhaps the public will note the powerful appeal of the hon. Gentleman himself.

Mr. MORGAN JONES: Is the right hon. Gentleman satisfied that in London where local post offices are established in shops the public are adequately safeguarded, especially in shops which are very crowded with other customers?

Sir K. WOOD: I shall be glad to look into any case the hon. Gentleman has in mind.

FACILITIES, STRATFORD.

Mr. BANFIELD (for Mr. GROVES): 26.
asked the Postmaster-General whether his attention has been called to the overtures made by the West Ham County Borough to his Department for the provision of a sub post office in that portion of Stratford known as the Carpenter's Estate; whether he is aware that many aged people are at present compelled to cross the Stratford High Street in order to cash their pension vouchers; and, in view of the risk to life and limb thereby entailed, will be give personal attention to the matter and investigate the reasons actuating his Department's refusal of West Ham's appeal?

Sir K. WOOD: I will certainly investigate this matter as the hon. Member requests, and let him know the result of my inquiries.

REGENT'S PARK.

Mr. BURNETT: 29.
asked the First Commissioner of Works whether he is aware that there is a shortage of public conveniences in Regent's Park; and whether he will obtain from the Bedford College authorities the surrender of a portion of their land, of which the Crown is the owner, in order to provide what is necessary close to the bridge on the Bedford College side of the lake?

The FIRST COMMISSIONER of WORKS (Mr. Ormsby-Gore): A new additional convenience in the Inner Circle Gardens, not far from the area referred to by the hon. Member, will be ready in the summer. The number of conveniences in Regent's Park will then, I am advised, be reasonably adequate, but I am now considering whether any further accommodation is required in the playing fields area in the Northern part of the Park.

Oral Answers to Questions — COAL INDUSTRY.

GRESFORD COLLIERY DISASTER FUND.

Mr. D. GRENFELL: 30.
asked the Attorney-General whether he has given consideration to the draft scheme for relief presented by the Central Board for administration of the Gresford relief fund; whether he is satisfied that the conditions for relief are as generous as desired; and whether it is intended to
include representatives of the Miners' Federation on the Central Board?

The ATTORNEY-GENERAL (Sir Thomas Inskip): I am satisfied that the trust deed and scheme which has been prepared on behalf of the Lord Mayor of London and the Lord Lieutenant of Denbighshire for the administration of the Gresford Colliery disaster fund fully carry out the intentions of the subscribers and permit the Central Board which will administer the fund to grant relief on as generous a scale as the fund permits. It is not intended to include representatives of the Miners' Federation on the Central Board, but the president of the North Wales Miners' Federation will be a member. Moreover, the scheme provides for a local committee which will act in an executive capacity under the Central Board, and three representatives of the North Wales Miners Federation and three representatives of the Gresford Miners' Lodge, in addition to other local representatives, will be members of this committee.

Mr. GRENFELL: Will these representatives be actually appointed by the bodies concerned or nominated by some other body?

The ATTORNEY-GENERAL: I think appointed by the body concerned. The scheme which is attached to the deed provides that "the appointed members shall be appointed by the following appointing authorities or bodies," and then the bodies I have mentioned are included.

Mr. GRENFELL: Is the Gresford Miners' Lodge included, and the Miners' Federation of North Wales?

The ATTORNEY-GENERAL: I have said that the North Wales Miners' Federation and the Gresford Miners' Lodge are -among the appointing bodies.

EMPLOYéS.

Mr. T. SMITH: 34.
asked the Secretary for Mines whether he can state the number of wage-earners employed in the mining industry on the latest date available; and the number employed on approximately the same date during 1929 to 1934, inclusive?

The SECRETARY for MINES (Mr. Ernest Brown): As the reply involves a table of figures, I will, with the hon.
Member's permission, circulate it with the OFFICIAL REPORT.

Mr. SMITH: What is the difference between the numbers employed in 1929 and now?

Mr. BROWN: In 1929, 910,600, and in 1935, 771,900.

Following is the table of figures:


9th February, 1929
…
910,600


8th February, 1930
…
957,300


7th February, 1931
…
881,300


6th February, 1932
…
839,800


11th February, 1933
…
788,500


10th February, 1934
…
787,800


9th February, 1935
…
771,900

Oral Answers to Questions — PUBLIC HEALTH.

SMOKE ABATEMENT.

Mr. WILMOT: 31.
asked the Minister of Health whether he proposes to adopt the recommendations of the National Smoke Abatement Society to set up a committee to investigate and report upon the measures necessary to abate the nuisance arising from the use of pulverised fuel and nuisances arising in connection with generating stations and other statutory undertakings?

The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the MINISTRY of HEALTH (Mr. Shakespeare): I would refer the hon. Member to the reply given to the question of the hon. Member for Westhoughton (Mr. Rhys Davies) on 31st January.

REFUSE DISPOSAL, SHREWSBURY.

Sir COOPER RAWSON: 32.
asked the Minister of Health whether he has considered the protest sent from 2,000 ratepayers in Shrewsbury against proposals to dump refuse on a site between two good-class residential districts on the banks of the Severn in Shrewsbury, alongside a public footpath used by thousands of people daily, including schoolchildren; and whether, in view of the local circumstances, he will advise the local authority that controlled tipping is less hygienic than incineration as a means of disposal of refuse in this case?

Mr. SHAKESPEARE: A public local inquiry with reference to this proposal has been held by one of my right hon. Friend's Inspectors at which full opportunity was given to the opposition to state their case. The Inspector's report is now being considered.

Oral Answers to Questions — UNEMPLOYMENT.

WORK-SHARING SCHEMES.

Mr. TINKER: 35.
asked the Minister of Labour how many employers have arranged with their employés to share out the work so as not to put some of them out of employment; and can he give the number of workers affected and the total who would be out of work but for the arrangement?

The MINISTER of LABOUR (Mr. Oliver Stanley): I am having a statement prepared and will publish it in the OFFICIAL REPORT as soon as possible.

BRITISH SHIPS (FOREIGN SEAMEN).

Mr. HERBERT WILLIAMS: 36.
asked the President of the Board of Trade whether he can state the number of foreigners serving in the British mercantile marine?

Dr. BURGIN: The number of seamen employed in British ships is ascertained only at a date when a census of seamen is taken, and the latest information relates to 15th June, 1933. On that date there were enumerated as employed in sea-trading vessels registered at ports in Great Britain, Northern Ireland, the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands 7,661 foreign seamen (other than lascars) and 42,475 lascar seamen (British subjects and foreigners). Under the heading "lascars" are included Asiatics and East Africans employed under agreements for natives of Asia or East Africa, which open and terminate in Asia.

Mr. WILLIAMS: Will the hon. Gentleman send a copy of his answer to the hon. Member for Wavertree (Mr. Cleary), who told us the other day that there were 40,000 foreigners in the mercantile marine?

Brigadier-General NATION: Will the hon. Gentleman co-operate with the Home Secretary with a view to repatriating these foreign seamen who arrive in this country on British ships in order to make room for the thousands of British seamen who are out of work?

Dr. BURGIN: Everything that is proper will be done by the Board of Trade to encourage the greater employment of British seamen on British ships. The House will like to know that the number of foreigners employed on British ships has been steadily diminishing since
1903, and it has never been at a lower figure. It is very necessary that these facts should be given wide publicity. As to the treatment of alien seamen in this country, the law is already quite strong enough to deal with the matter. It is a question of the administration of that law, and due attention will be given to it.

Dr. ADDISON: Does the hon. Gentleman exclude from the term "foreigner" the large number of Chinamen alleged to have been born at Hong Kong?

Dr. BURGIN: The hon. Gentleman to whom the right hon. Gentleman refers excludes from "foreigner" every British subject, whether born at Hong Kong or elsewhere.

Mr. PALING: Are the wages of these people, lascars and foreigners, regulated by the Maritime Board?

Dr. BURGIN: Perhaps the hon. Gentleman will put down that question.

Viscountess ASTOR: Did I hear the International Brotherhood of Brothers talking about the Chinese as foreigners?

HIS MAJESTY'S SILVER JUBILEE (CELEBRATIONS).

Lieut.-Colonel LLEWELLIN: 39.
asked the Financial Secretary to the War Office what arrangements, if any, are being made for all units of the Territorial Army in England to take some official part in His Majesty the King's Jubilee celebrations?

The FINANCIAL SECRETARY to the WAR OFFICE (Mr. Douglas Hacking): I am afraid that I am not yet in a position to supplement the answer which I gave to my hon. Friend the Member for the Spelthorne Division of Middlesex (Sir R. Blaker) last Wednesday.

PROSECUTION AND CONVICTION, WEALDSTONE.

Mr. WILMOT: 40.
asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether his attention has been called to the case of Mr. John O'Neill, who was convicted on the 21st September last by the Wealdstone Justices on a charge of embezzlement of a sum of £3 9s. 10d. and
sentenced to three months' imprisonment, although a first offender; whether he is aware that, owing to the failure of the clerk of the Wealdstone Magistrates to forward the notice of appeal in the appropriate manner and time, this man was debarred from his legal right of appeal; and whether, in the circumstances, he will take steps to make amends for this miscarriage of justice?

The SECRETARY of STATE for the HOME DEPARTMENT (Sir John Gilmour): My attention was drawn to this case during the currency of the sentence and I communicated with the Clerk to the Justices about the matter to which the hon. Member refers, but there was no way of, restoring to the defendant an opportunity of appealing, and, after making full inquiries into the merits of the case, I could find no grounds on which I could properly recommend that the prerogative of mercy should be exercised in his favour.

Mr. WILMOT: While thanking the right hon. Gentleman for the reply, may I ask whether he does not consider that it is a very serious condition of affairs that an accused person should lose the right of appeal on account of a mistake of an official of the court?

Sir J. GILMOUR: Oh, yes, Sir, but it was due to a misunderstanding, and, under those conditions, I looked into all the circumstances of the case in order to see whether there was any question of the prerogative of mercy, and on the information I had before me I came to the conclusion that there was not.

Mr. MORGAN JONES: Does not the right hon. Gentleman agree that, even if he himself saw no cause for reviewing the case, the Appeal Court might have seen that there was cause?

Sir J. GILMOUR: It is also the case that the Appeal Court as well as having power to reduce the sentence could increase it.

Mr. WILMOT: May I ask the right hon. Gentleman whether, in view of the very great hardship which has been caused by a miscarriage of justice in the case of a first offender, he will at least consider whether it would be possible to erase this conviction from the court rolls in order that a possible miscarriage of justice may not hang round this man's neck for the rest of his life?

Sir J. GILMOUR: All I can say is, that if the hon. Member can produce any fresh facts for my consideration, I shall be quite ready to consider them.

FIRE, PEACEHAVEN.

Mr. THOMAS COOK: 41.
asked the Home Secretary whether his attention has been called to a fire which recently occurred at Peacehaven; whether he is aware that two brigades refused to respond to a call, resulting in the property being destroyed; and whether he has any statement to make on the matter?

Sir J. GILMOUR: I have obtained a report from the chief constable of East Sussex and am informed that the two fire brigades did not attend because the fire was outside their districts. It rests with the local authority to provide, or to arrange with other local authorities to provide, any necessary fire protection.

Mr. COOK: Does not the right hon. Gentleman consider that the time has now arrived when the question of fire brigade organisation should have the attention of His Majesty's Government?

DANGEROUS ACIDS (ROAD TRANSPORT).

Major HILLS: 42.
asked the Home Secretary when the revised regulations for the carriage of dangerous acids by road will be ready; whether he is aware that large quantities of such acids are now being transported by road, and that recently seven lorries containing carboys presumably filled with such acids were met with in a short distance on the Great North Road; whether he will bear in mind the disaster which occurred in 1933 at Boroughbridge owing to a collision with a lorry containing such acids; and therefore can he expedite the issue of such regulations?

Sir J. GILMOUR: I am not in a position at the moment to specify a date for the issue of the draft regulations; but I can assure the hon. and gallant Member that I fully appreciate the considerations to which he calls attention, and that, as I informed him in answer to his question on the 4th instant, all possible steps are being taken to expedite the matter.

NEWSPAPER ADVERTISEMENT.

Mr. THORNE: 43.
asked the Home Secretary whether he has received a report from the Croydon Criminal Investigation Department in connection with a hoax advertisement that was inserted in two London newspapers; if he can state the names of the newspapers; whether efforts are being made to trace the person who inserted the advertisement; and what action he proposes to take in the matter?

Sir J. GILMOUR: My attention has not previously been called to this incident. I am making inquiries in the matter and will communicate with the hon. Member in due course.

ESTATE DUTY.

Mr. WILMOT: 44.
asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer the amount of Estate Duty which has been paid to date on the estate of the late Sir John Ellerman; whether a complete and final valuation of the estate for Death Duty purposes has yet been made; and, if so, what is the figure of the valuation?

The FINANCIAL SECRETARY to the TREASURY (Mr. Duff Cooper): I am not prepared to disclose information relating to the estate of an individual taxpayer.

Mr. MORGAN JONES: Can the hon. Gentleman say whether there is any precedent at all for the information for which my hon. Friend asks?

Mr. COOPER: Not so far as I am aware, but perhaps the hon. Gentleman will give me notice of that question?

Mr. WILMOT: If I can show the hon. Gentleman a precedent for giving such information, will he be prepared to state it in this particular case?

Mr. COOPER: I think it is definitely not in the public interest to disclose the Income Tax return, or any return, about individual taxpayers. I must rely on the confidence which the taxpayer has in the discretion of the Government.

Mr. WILMOT: Will not the hon. Gentleman have regard to the fact that it is not a request for information with regard to Income Tax, but Estate Duty, and, of course, the person concerned is no longer alive?

Mr. COOPER: I think that the same objections obviously apply.

Viscountess ASTOR: Is it not of great public interest that Sir John Ellerman started as a penniless boy and made a fortune; and should not we look with pride on this triumph of private enterprise?

ARMAMENTS (ROYAL COMMISSION).

Sir H. SAMUEL: 45.
asked the Prime Minister whether he is now in a position to give the composition and terms of reference of the Royal Commission of inquiry into the private manufacture of and trading in arms?

The PRIME MINISTER (Mr. Ramsay MacDonald): Yes, Sir. I am glad to say that the Royal Commission has just been completed. The composition will be:
Sir John Eldon Bankes (Chairman), ex-Lord Justice of Appeal.
Sir Thomas Allen, long associated with the Co-operative Movement.
Dame Rachel Crowdy, who has done great service in Geneva on the Secretariat of the League of Nations.
Sir Philip Gibbs, who has a unique knowledge of the Continental situation.
Professor H. C. Gutteridge, Reader in Comparative Law at Cambridge University, formerly Cassel Professor of Law, and Dean of the Faculty of Law in London University.
Sir Kenneth Lee, a well-known Lancashire business man.
Mr. J. A. Spender, the distinguished publicist.

The terms of reference are:
(1) To consider and report upon the practicability and desirability (both from the national and international point of view) of the adoption
(a) by the United Kingdom alone,
(b) by the United Kingdom in conjunction with the other countries of the world,
of a prohibition of private manufacture of and trade in arms and munitions of
24
war, and the institution of a State monopoly of such manufacture and trade.
(2) To consider and report whether there are any steps which can usefully be taken to remove or minimise the kinds of objections to which private manufacture is stated in Article 8 (5) of the Covenant of the League of Nations to be open.
(3) To examine the present arrangements in force in the United Kingdom relative to the control of the export trade in arms and munitions of war, and to report whether these arrangements require revision and, if so, in what directions.

The Royal Commission will be appointed under the usual form of Warrant giving powers to call persons before them to give evidence, to call for information in writing and to call for and examine documents.

Brigadier-General NATION: Can the right hon. Gentleman say when this Commission will commence work, and whether the report is expected by the end of the year?

The PRIME MINISTER: Naturally, I cannot answer the second part of the question until the Commission have begun their work, but the intention is that the Commission should begin their work without delay. There will be certain papers that will have to be supplied and further information obtained, so that when they begin their work they may be ready to go straight ahead with it. There may be a week or two, not of delay, but of necessary preparation.

Sir H. SAMUEL: While thanking the right hon. Gentleman for his statement, may I ask whether the Commission will have the powers of a Select Committee to take evidence on oath?

The PRIME MINISTER: Various points were considered, that being one of them. We felt that it would be a. great mistake to begin by assuming, by the special powers given to the Commission, that they were going to have any trouble at all in getting their witnesses and their evidence, but I can say this, that the Government mean to give the Commission full support in the discharge of their duties, and, if the Chairman requires to
make any representation to the Government in order to make that possible, he will get our assistance.

Captain P. MACDONALD: May I ask the right hon. Gentleman whether the evidence will be taken in private or in public?

The PRIME MINISTER: The method is as a rule in public, but if for any reason, with which the Chairman agrees, private sessions should be held, those sessions will be held in private.

Mr. LANSBURY: We have not had time to consider any of these names, but I notice that the right hon. Gentleman called special attention to a Lancashire business man. Is there any representative of Labour on this Commission?

The PRIME MINISTER: Sir Kenneth Lee is not a representative of business, but he is a Lancashire business man. I only said what I did about him because I had described each one. There is a name with which the right hon. Gentleman is familiar in connection with the great Labour economic movement of cooperation. None represent, but they are all selected by the Government.

Mr. LANSBURY: I quite understand that, but I suggest to the right hon. Gentleman that it is usual in a Commission of this character to appoint some one representing what is known as the organised Labour movement. I should have thought that in a matter of this kind such a representative would have been appointed. There is no opportunity to raise the question in the House except in this way.

The PRIME MINISTER: The right hon. Gentleman will, I am sure, appreciate the great difficulty that I was in in getting this Commission together, for the very simple reason that I could not select anyone who had written, or had spoken, or in. any public form had committed himself to either "yea" or "nay" on the issues that will be before the Commission.

Mr. WILMOT: Did I understand the Prime Minister to say, in reply to the right hon. Member for Darwen (Sir H. Samuel), that the Commission will not have power to take evidence on oath?

The PRIME MINISTER: No. What the hon. Member must understand is this, that to begin with they have not that power. That is not a power that is given to a Royal Commission, except under special circumstances. But what I have said is, that if there is any impediment which the chairman finds in his lack of being able to administer the oath to a witness, all he has to do is to communicate with me, and it will be removed.

Major Sir ARCHIBALD SINCLAIR: Will documents in Government Departments be at the free disposal of the Commission in carrying out their work?

The PRIME MINISTER: In so far as there is no trouble at all in the production of documents, the Commission will get them. If there are documents that are required but which in the opinion of the Government ought not to be produced, those documents will not be produced.

Dr. ADDISON: Does the power in regard to the production of papers relate to the proceedings of private firms? Is it a general power, or must they specify in advance the particular paper they require?

The PRIME MINISTER: We must leave that absolutely. They have power to ask for papers, and I shall leave how that is to be applied and operated to the discretion of the Commission.

COMMODITY SPECULATIONS.

Mr. D. GRENFELL: 46.
asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether he intends to take any action regarding the loss of confidence in the City of London due to recent commodity speculations?

Mr. COOPER: In view of the prompt measures taken in the City to minimise the effects of the recent commodity speculations, I do not think it would be correct to ascribe to these operations the movements of securities to which I presume the hon. Member refers. As to what further action, if any, should be taken, I understand the position to be that a petition has already been made to the Court for the compulsory winding-up of James and Shakespeare Limited, the company which was specially associated with the recent transactions. The petition is to be heard within a few days, and on its being granted the Official Receiver will
be required, in the discharge of the duties specifically laid upon him by Section 182 of the Companies Act, 1929, to make full enquiry into the causes of the failure, and to report to the Court whether in his opinion further inquiry is desirable into the circumstances attending the promotion of the company and the conduct of its business. The section further provides that the Official Receiver may also, if he thinks fit, make a further report as to whether in his opinion any fraud has been committed by any person in the promotion or formation of the company, or by any director or other officer of the company in relation to the company since the formation thereof, and on any other matters which in his opinion it is desirable to bring to the notice of the Court. The House will, therefore, see that the existing law makes suitable provision for judical inquiry into the circumstances attending this class of case; and His Majesty's Government propose to await the result of the statutory inquiry or inquiries before considering the matter further.

Mr. GRENFELL: Is the hon. Member satisfied that the inquiry will be pursued as far as is necessary to allay public opinion, or general opinion in the City, and is he aware that already shareholders who have lost considerably by these transactions in connection with James and Shakespeare make the allegation freely that their interests in the firm were confined to the business in tin and not to the speculations in pepper, and that to that extent their investments in the company have been based upon fraudulent representations? Having regard to the necessity of giving confidence in the City and to the general public in the country, who are much concerned about the character of these transactions, will the inquiry be thorough?

Mr. COOPER: I think my answer has replied to all the points that the hon. Member has raised.

Sir WILLIAM DAVISON: Has not the loss of confidence in the City been due not so much to the recent commodity speculations as to the fear of the City that circumstances that have arisen might mean the return of a Socialist Government?

Mr. BRACKEN: Will my hon. Friend also consider the desirability of holding an inquiry into the wild speculations in Mincing Lane in commodities, which have inflicted immense losses upon the Cooperative Wholesale Society?

Mr. GRENFELL: Will the hon. Member inform the House whether it is the case that a very large number of the leading figures in joint stock banking were involved in this company and whether it is not in the public interest that that should definitely be made known.

ANGLO-SCOTTISH BEET-SUGAR CORPORATION.

Mr. MALLALIEU: 47.
asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer what are the powers of the Government representative on the board of the Anglo-Scottish Beet-Sugar Corporation, Limited; and whether the loans made by the Treasury to this company received the full recommendation of the Government representative?

Mr. COOPER: The Treasury Director, in this and other cases, has no special powers over and above those conferred upon other members of the board. With regard to the second part of the question, the Treasury was given power, under the Trade Facilities Acts, to guarantee loans, after consultation with the Advisory Committee appointed in terms of those Acts. The question of a recommendation by the Treasury Director did not therefore arise.

Mr. MALLALIEU: Is it the practice before making such loans for the Treasury specially to consult their representative, and to have a report?

Mr. COOPER: The Treasury naturally keep in close touch with their representative throughout.

PROPOSED AERIAL CONVENTION (WESTERN EUROPE).

Mr. MORGAN JONES (for Mr. ATTLEE): 15.
asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he can make any further statement as to the proposed air agreement with Germany, France, and Belgium?

The LORD PRIVY SEAL (Mr. Eden): Yes, Sir. I can now inform the House that the Belgian, German and Italian
Governments have all stated their point of view on the invitation issued to them by ourselves and the French Government after the London meeting to consider with them whether an aerial convention for Western Europe could not be promptly negotiated. The Belgian Government have informed us in an official note of 11th February that they recognise Belgium's interest in participating in this negotiation. An Italian communiqué published on 9th February states that Italy approves of the proposal in principle subject to consideration of the question of the special mutual responsibilities of Italy and this country to one another. The German Government have informed us in the official note published on 14th February that they welcome the proposal and are ready to consider in free agreement with the other Governments concerned the ways and the means of the conclusion of the proposed agreement.

Mr. JONES: While thanking the right hon. Gentleman for his reply, may I ask whether, when the communications have passed between the Governments in this matter and some agreement has been arrived at tentatively, he will present papers to the House so that hon. Members can study them before any discussion arises?

Mr. EDEN: I am sure that my right hon. Friend is desirious of keeping the House fully informed.

STONEHENGE.

Mr. BURNETT (for Sir PERCY HURD): 27.
asked the First Commissioner of Works whether, in order to preserve the amenities of Stonehenge as a national memorial, he will give instructions that no picnicking or unseemly litter shall be allowed inside the enclosure?

Mr. ORMSBY-GORE: Yes, Sir. I am proposing to take steps to prevent picnicking within the enclosure, and I am issuing special instructions as to the clearing of litter and warning of offenders. I am informed that the custodians do their best to cope with this problem but have to deal as well with rubbish that is blown in or thrown from the adjoining public road. The proposed establishment of a car-park and the appointment of an additional custodian should help considerably to diminish nuisances.

Mr. BURNETT (for Sir P. HURD): 28.
asked the First Commissioner of Works whether, in order to remove public uneasiness, he will now publish the text of the deed under which the control of a part of Stonehenge now passes to his Department from the National Trust to whom it was conveyed by the Stonehenge Preservation Fund?

Mr. ORMSBY-GORE: The deed is not finally completed, but I will certainly make its terms public at the earliest opportunity.

CANADA (MUNICIPAL LOANS).

Mr. BURNETT (for Sir P. HURD): 33.
asked the Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs the result of his inquiries of the Canadian Government regarding the position of British holders of the Ontario and Vancouver municipal bonds, in view of the recent official statements by the Ontario Minister of Municipal Affairs and the mayor of Vancouver?

The SECRETARY of STATE for DOMINION AFFAIRS (Mr. J. H. Thomas): As the information which has reached me from the Canadian Government goes into the position in considerable detail, I will, with the permission of the House, circulate a statement in the OFFICIAL REPORT.

Following is the statement:

I am informed that under the Canadian Federal system the Dominion has no control over, or responsibility for, municipal financial obligations. Municipalities are created by provincial legislation and are under provincial control. A number of the Provinces have set up municipal boards or commissions which exercise varying degrees of administrative control, particularly where municipalities find difficulty in meeting their obligations. Such difficulties have occurred in recent years as regards some 10 per cent. of the total amount of municipal bonded indebtedness outstanding. It is estimated that about 69 per cent. of all Canadian municipal obligations is payable in Canada, about 7 per cent. in the United Kingdom, and some 24 per cent. in the United States and other countries.

I am also informed that the Premier of Ontario has indicated that the statement of the Minister of Municipal Affairs
in the Provincial Government of Ontario was to the effect that Ontario municipalities in default will pay 3 per cent. interest in 1935 and will be refinanced before the 1st January, 1936, the refinancing to consist of debtor and creditor arriving at a composition by mutual consent based upon ability to pay. The Premier of the Province points out that, before that statement was made, only 4 per cent. of those Ontario municipalities which were in default were paying any part of the interest on their debentures, only 3 per cent. full interest, and that over 90 per cent. had paid no interest in the last two years, whereas now all defaulting municipalities will pay 3 per cent. for 1935 pending refinancing. In this connection I would also refer to the reply given by my hon. Friend the Secretary to the Treasury to the hon. Member for West Bromwich (Mr. A. Ramsay) on the 14th February.

The Premier of Ontario has also called attention to a published statement which he made recently and which concluded as follows: "The high credit standing of the Province of Ontario in this country and abroad has been built up over the years by the prompt and regular payment of public obligations of the province and its constituent municipalities in accordance with the letter of the contract in each case, and I would regret the day that it cannot continue to do so. This does not imply, however, that certain municipalities do not require adjustment. They do. It is in the interest of bondholders that they do adjust. The Ontario Municipal Board will put an end to the idea of some that certain municipalities which have not defaulted will be permitted to do so to ease their situation and taxation they are facing.

As regards the question of Vancouver municipal bonds, I would invite reference to my replies to the hon. Member for North. Newcastle-on-Tyne (Sir N. Grattan-Doyle) on the 6th February. I am now informed that the meetings of the Mayor of Vancouver with representatives of the bondholders on the 11th and 12th of February resulted in agreement that a Toronto financial expert should be engaged by the city council to examine the city's finances and resources. I gather that it is contemplated that this expert will report to the city council who will inform the bondholders.

EDUCATION (MAINTENANCE ALLOWANCES).

Mr. McENTEE: 37.
asked the Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Education whether he will give the names of the 142 local education authorities which provide maintenance allowances for special-place children, and the scale of allowances of each authority?

The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the BOARD of EDUCATION (Mr. Ramsbotham): I will send the hon. Member a list, of the 142 local education authorities concerned. I regret that I cannot furnish him with the scales of allowances for each authority, since these vary according to the parental income, the number of children in the family, and, in some cases, the age of the pupil.

Mr. MORGAN JONES: Will the Parliamentary Secretary consider circulating this information in the OFFICIAL REPORT?

Mr. RAMSBOTHAM: The income scales of a single authority in some cases runs to three or four pages, and I do not think it would be possible to publish it in the OFFICIAL REPORT.

Viscountess ASTOR: Is it not the case that local authorities have a means test for granting maintenance allowances? Has not the London County Council a means test in granting these allowances?

Mr. RAMSBOTHAM: indicated assent.

WOOLWICH ARSENAL.

Mr. THORNE (for Mr. HICKS): 38.
asked the Financial Secretary to the War Office whether he is now in a position to make a statement as to whether it is proposed to remove Woolwich Arsenal?

Mr. BLINDELL (Lord of the Treasury): I have been asked to reply. No, Sir. This question is a very large one, and a decision is not to be expected in the near future.

Mr. THORNE: Has the hon. Member seen a report which has appeared in most newspapers that it is possible that Woolwich Arsenal is going to be moved to Pembroke?

Mr. BLINDELL: I have not seen the report, but I will convey the information to my hon. Friend.

PALESTINE (ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION).

Colonel WEDGWOOD: by Private Notice
asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether he has any news of the hunger striking in the Palestine gaols and how many are at present striking?

The SECRETARY of STATE for the COLONIES (Sir Philip Cunliffe-Lister): I have obtained a report from the High Commissioner for Palestine, stating the following facts. Sixty-eight Jews who were detained in Acre gaol following conviction for illegal entry into Palestine declared a hunger strike after evening meal on the 12th February as a protest against their continued imprisonment after the expiration of the sentences imposed upon them by the Courts. In every case an order of deportation had been made immediately upon committal by the Inspector-General of Police in the exercise of authority vested in him under Section 10 (1) of the Immigration Ordinance, and subsequently warrants of detention were issued by the High Commissioner under Section 10 (8) to cover any period of custody after the expiry of court sentences which might be necessitated by delay in completing the formalities of deportation. This is the normal procedure followed in all cases of conviction for illegal entry.
Actually on the day of the hunger strike the court sentences were still unexpired in 12 cases. In the remainder they had run out and negotiations with regard to deportation were proceeding. Although there was good reason to believe, and enquiries have since shown, that most if not all these 68 Jews are of European nationality other than Russian, each affirmed on arrest that he was a Russian, and each gave a false name and falsified other particulars of identity. No passports or other travel documents were found in their possession. The police have therefore to make complicated and necessarily protracted enquiries through agents in Syria, Greece and elsewhere. So far nationality has been established in 40 cases, mostly Polish, but including a few Hungarians and Czecho-Slovakians, and the foreign consuls concerned in Palestine have accordingly been asked to expedite the grant of travelling facilities. Enquiries continue with a view to establishing nationality in the remaining cases.
The High Commissioner has generally no objection to the acceptance of suitable bail bonds, and he accordingly gave instructions that any of the 68 persons whose court sentences had expired might be released on a bond of £100 by each of two reputable sureties undertaking to produce him at the end of two months, or sooner if called upon by the police, or alternatively to prove that he had left the country. On becoming aware of these instructions the prisoners broke their fast on the afternoon of the 14th February. The hunger strike was not complete. Seven prisoners took food on the 13th February and the rest took liquid throughout the duration of the strike. The strikers were examined daily by the prison doctor and found in good health with the exception of two who were admitted to the hospital ward on the morning of the 14th February and who were due to be discharged yesterday.

Colonel WEDGWOOD: How long is the right hon. Gentleman going to put in prison and keep in prison these unfortunate Jews, whose only crime is that they want to enter Palestine?

Sir P. CUNLIFFE-LISTER: It is perfectly well known to every hon. Member of the House, if not to the right hon. and gallant Member, that illegal immigration into Palestine on the part of Jews or anybody else is an offence against the law. It is in the interests of the country that entry into Palestine of Jews should be in a properly authorised way. It is surely in everyone's interest that illegal immigration should be stopped.

Colonel WEDGWOOD: The House is aware, if the right hon. Gentleman himself is not aware, that this practice of gaoling people who are fugitives from Europe does not redound to the credit of this Government.

SCOTLAND (CUPAR SUGAR-BEET FACTORY).

Mr. HENDERSON STEWART: by Private Notice
asked the Secretary of State for Scotland whether he is aware of the concern aroused among farmers at the reported decision to close down the only Scottish beet-sugar factory at Cupar; and, if in view of the fact that farmers in all parts of the country have prepared or are daily preparing their land for the next beet crop, and that if
the Cupar factory is closed confusion and much loss will be caused in many farms, he can make an immediate statement to re-assure Scottish growers?

The SECRETARY of STATE for SCOTLAND (Sir Godfrey Collins): I am aware that the question of closing the Cupar sugar-beet factory has been under consideration by the Anglo-Scottish Beet Sugar Corporation, but no final decision has yet been taken in the matter, and I am not unhopeful that arrangements may be made under which the factory may be operated during the coming season.

Mr. H. STEWART: While thanking the right hon. Gentleman for his answer, may I ask, in view of the seriousness of the situation and the urgent need for reassurance, whether he will be in a position to make a definite statement if I repeat my question in a few days' time?

Sir G. COLLINS: My hon. Friend will have to wait more than two or three days, but I will communicate with him when I am in a position to make a statement on the subject.

Viscountess ASTOR: Will the right hon. Gentleman bear in mind that sugar-beet has already cost the country £40,000,000? Will he therefore go slow before making any further grants and consider the need for nursery schools?

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE.

Mr. LANSBURY: May I ask the Prime Minister what business he proposes to take to-night?

The PRIME MINISTER: We are suspending the Eleven o'clock Rule in order to take the Committee stage of the Cattle Industry (Emergency Provisions) Money Resolution; the Motion regarding the Proceedings on the Government of India Bill—that is the Motion which was not moved on Friday. We are also taking the Report stage of the Post Office (Amendment) Money Resolution, the Report stage of the Post Office and Telegraph Money Resolution and the Superannuation Money Resolution, which are all exempted business.

Ordered,
That the Proceedings on Government Business be exempted, at this day's Sitting, from the provisions of the Standing Order (Sittings of the House)."—[The Prime Minister.]

CIVIL;ESTIMATES (SUPPLE MENTARY ESTIMATES, 1934).

Estimate presented,—of a further sum required to be voted for the service of the year ending 31st March, 1935, [by Command]; Referred to the Committee of Supply, and to be printed.

CATTLE INDUSTRY (EMERGENCY PROVISIONS) [MONEY].

Considered in Committee under Standing Order No. 69.

[Captain BOURNE in the Chair.]

Motion made, and Question proposed,

"That it is expedient—

(1) to provide for extending, by not more than six months, the period during which cattle or carcases of cattle must have been sold in order that payments in respect thereof may be made out of the Cattle Fund under Section two of the Cattle Industry (Emergency Provisions) Act, 1934;

(2) to authorise the Treasury to make, during the months of April, May and June, nineteen hundred and thirty-five, advances to the said fund, not exceeding in the aggregate one million and fifty thousand pounds, out of the Consolidated Fund of the United Kingdom, and to provide for requiring that any such advances shall be repaid from the Cattle Fund to the Exchequer of the United Kingdom before the fifteenth day of August, nineteen hundred and thirty-five; and

(3) to provide for other matters connected with the matters aforesaid,"—(King's Recommendation signified.)—[Mr. Elliot.]

The MINISTER of AGRICULTURE (Mr. Elliot): This Financial Resolution makes provision for further advances from the Exchequer to the cattle fund with a view to payments being continued at the present rate to the producers of fat stock in the United Kingdom for a period of three months from 31st March, 1935, when the present Act expires. The present Act, of course, has not yet expired, and I am sure it will be for the advantage of all of us in this Committee to see that no rush takes place in this matter and that arrangements are made for the period to succeed 31st March well in advance of any crisis which might otherwise arise. The Committee will recall the circumstances in which Parliament was asked to approve the Cattle Industry (Emergency Provisions) Act in July last. In the memorandum on the livestock situation issued by the Government before that legislation was introduced, attention was called to the very serious decline which had taken place in 1932, 1933 and the first part of 1934, in the prices of fat and store cattle in the United Kingdom. It was then explained that the alternatives before the Government were either drastic reduction of imports to the point that was necessary to
sustain prices of United Kingdom livestock at a remunerative figure, or the introduction, in agreement with overseas countries, of a levy upon imports, the proceeds of which would be available for the assistance of home industry.
The first solution, quantitative regulation, corresponds more closely with the views advocated by the right hon. Member for Darwen (Sir H. Samuel). The second one, the levy used to balance up the home price, corresponds more closely with the solution advocated by the right hon. Member for Swindon (Dr. Addison) and his party. [HON. MEMBERS; "No!"] I do not expect all my hon. Friends opposite to be conversant with every detail of their official programme.
As regards the levy upon imports, it was explained in July last that the quantity of the imports might either be left entirely free or subjected to such moderate regulation as might be thought necessary to prevent the market from breaking altogether. It was, however, pointed out that without the consent of the countries concerned no duty could be imposed on Dominion meat before August, 1937, or on Argentine meat before November, 1936. The immediate crisis in July last was met by a subsidy to cattle producers in order to give time for negotiations on the proposals for a levy.
No one realises more clearly than the United Kingdom Government the extreme difficulty of the problems with which overseas supplying countries are faced, and negotiations involving issues of such far-reaching importance cannot be rushed. I stress that again to the Committee—that the trade and Imperial issues involved in these negotiations are of the greatest importance, and that it is vitally necessary that supplying countries should feel that every possible consideration would be given to their views and that every effort would be made to meet the arguments which they repeatedly advance to the Government of this country. We have been anxious to give the fullest possible opportunity for the examination of alternatives, neither of which, it was well recognised, could be regarded as palatable. It was hoped that the seven months' period during which Parliament has agreed to the situation being held by payments from the Exchequer would have sufficed for this purpose. That hope, however, has not been realised.
It would, of course, have been open to us at any time in the last seven months to have cut the Gordian knot and to have solved the problem by the limitation of imports, as we have power to do under the agreements that we have signed; but to avoid the shock to the trade of supplying countries, which it is very necessary to do, we have held our hand in the interests of the general trade and commerce of this country, and the general trade and commerce of this country has benefited by the fact that we have negotiated and have not decided to take the drastic and immediate action which, all admit, was open to us under the legal agreements which have been drawn up. There was the question whether in these circumstances it would not still be necessary to bring into operation on 1st April next the alternative of drastic supply regulation, which was indicated in the White Paper of July last.
There can be no question that if the adoption of one or other of these alternatives is to be deferred, a continuance of financial assistance to the home beef industry is absolutely necessary. The fat cattle prices in England and Wales have fallen to 33s. 8d. per cwt. live weight. That is lower than the price in the corresponding week of 1934 by 4s. 8d., or practically the whole of the subsidy. The average price for the five months, September, 1934, to January, 1935, has been 34s. per live cwt., compared with an average of 36s. 3½d. in the corresponding period of 1933–34.

Dr. ADDISON: The right hon. Gentleman mentioned a decline of 4s. 8d. in the price. Would he give us the dates again?

Mr. ELLIOT: In the twelve months period, taking this week with the corresponding week of last year, the price has fallen by 4s. 8d.

Sir PERCY HARRIS: That is since the subsidy.

Mr. ELLIOT: Oh yes. There was no subsidy at this time last year. The decline in the period of five months, September, 1934, to January, 1935, was about Is. 4d. per cwt., or 3 per cent., and the producer was during that period, other things being equal, better off to the extent of about 37s. 6d. per beast as a result of the subsidy. Probably I shall be asked by hon. Members opposite whether the
butcher is getting the money. All I shall say at the moment is that if I am asked that question I shall be willing on another occasion to deal with it at length. As to the question of the butcher not getting any of the money that would involve us of course in a further extension of control which it is very desirable to avoid. Nobody wishes to extend control any further than is absolutely necessitated by the circumstances of the case. If the prices were unremunerative in 1934 they are worse now.

Sir HERBERT SAMUEL: Is the right hon. Gentleman not going to tell us where the money goes that is voted by Parliament? He said that if the question were asked he would deal with it on some other occasion, but we ought to be told now when we are being asked to vote the money.

Mr. ELLIOT: I do not wish to throw my remarks out of proportion and after all there are many factors involved in the question of where the money voted by Parliament has gone. As I say, there is a seasonal decline about that period of the year which inevitably absorbs a considerable quantity of the money. There have been heavier supplies for the market and cheaper supplies to many of the people of this country. Putting these and other factors together it would require an analysis of some length to work the matter out in detail. Taking it altogether there has been a certain advantage to the producer in this country and a certain advantage, no doubt, to the retailer in this country and a certain advantage to the consumer in this country but I do not wish to go into those factors at length at the moment.
All that can be done pending the conclusion of negotiations to hold the import situation has been and is being done. The reduction in foreign supplies of frozen meat agreed to at Ottawa, namely, 35 per cent. of the Ottawa year quantities has been maintained and the 10 per cent. cut in respect of foreign chilled beef first imposed in November, 1932, has also been continued. A very substantial measure of voluntary co-operation has been secured from Empire countries in conforming to the programmes put forward by the United Kingdom Government covering the periods July to September, 1934, and January to March, 1935. There has been
a substantial reduction in the supplies of fat cattle from the Irish Free State and it is interesting to see how far the prophecies of evil which were launched by the Opposition have been falsified in the event. To listen to or to read their speeches anyone would conclude that beef was about to be made unprocurable by the working class of this country; that prices were to be hoisted to a region which would take beef utterly out of the reach of working-class households. Those extravagant assumptions have not been realised in practice, but what we forecast has been singularly closely realised, namely, that the reductions which we were making were barely enough to hold the market where it was and that any suggestion that this would lead to a great rise in prices would not be borne out.

Sir P. HARRIS: We never said that the subsidies would cause an increase of price—quite the contrary.

Mr. ELLIOT: I am afraid I have not made myself clear to the hon. Gentleman. At the moment I was discussing the reduction of the supply in the market and I was referring to speeches by the hon. Gentleman and others indicating that the reduction in the supply of Irish cattle—which was the means by which we only just held the market from utter crash and collapse—would deprive his constituents altogether of that healthy and pleasant food, British beef. I am pointing out that those speeches have not been justified by what has actually happened. The total supplies of beef and fat cattle during the period September, 1934, to January, 1935, were maintained at practically the same figure as those for the corresponding period of 1933–34. They were not diminished. They were maintained and as we all know there is going on a certain change in public taste. There is a movement away from beef and in favour of other forms of meat so that in fact the beef market is actually shrinking and the supplier will need to square that fact with his desire to send increasing quantities into the market. You have a market in which supply is outrunning demand but that is not due to economic circumstances. The shift in the demand was manifest even in years of relatively low unemployment and high prosperity. Even during those times the movement away from beef was manifest
and the present rush of countries to heap further supplies upon this market is bound to bring about a situation in which the conditions move against the producer and in favour of others who are interested in the trade. The arrangement recently made for regulation of the supplies of imported beef during the first quarter of 1935 are designed—making allowance for the beef equivalent of the imports of fat cattle—to secure a reduction from 3,220,000 cwts. in the first quarter of 1934 to 3,138,000 cwt. or a reduction of 2.6 per cent. and accordingly we have thought it justifiable to continue to negotiate.
At this point the Committee might be interested to have a few particulars as to the working of the Cattle Committee which will have to operate this Measure as it operated the last. The machinery for the distribution of the subsidy which was set up at very short notice and under great pressure has, I think I can claim, worked with remarkable smoothness and efficiency and I should like to take this opportunity of congratulating Sir John Chancellor and his colleagues of the Cattle Committee and their staff upon an administrative feat of which they and indeed the House of Commons may well be proud. Satisfactory results could not have been achieved without the help of various national organisations representing auctioneers, butchers and farmers who gave their active and cordial co-operation not merely in framing and launching the scheme but throughout its operation. The Act only received the Royal Assent on 31st July of last year and 10 days afterwards the Cattle Committee had presented its report and the Particulars of Arrangements required by the Act to the appropriate Ministers, who, on the same day, signified their approval of the arrangements. Invitations to apply for approval of certification centres were sent out to 800 markets provisionally agreed. On 29th August, the Cattle Committee were in a position to advise the Ministers that the arrangements were so far advanced that the scheme could be brought into operation on 1st September, the first date permissible under the Act.
It will be remembered that when the Measure was passing through the House of Commons grave doubts were expressed by hon. Members who were conversant with the practical working of the livestock trade as to whether a scheme could
be got ready in time for the autumn. The scheme was got working in time and, what is more, it came into action with singularly little dislocation either of prices or supplies. There was no holding back before it and no rush into the market after it. The industry accepted the Act and worked it in a responsible and painstaking manner. By 31st August, over 600 applications for approval of live weight certification centres had been considered and passed. All these were markets likely to be held on Saturday, 1st September, and Monday, 3rd September, so that we had carried through all the complicated administrative details which were necessary to ensure that the certifying officers would be able to carry out their work. Twenty-five dead weight certification centres were approved in time to commence operation on 1st September and by the following Saturday the totals had been raised to 795 live weight certification centres and 29 dead weight certification centres. The arrangements for making the payments work so smoothly that payment is usually made within three or four days of the receipt of the certificate by the Cattle Committee—a very remarkable administrative result. It was estimated that about 1,000,000 animals were likely to be marketed in the seven months September to March. The present indications are that the number of animals likely to come forward in that period will be about 900,000, which is rather smaller than the number we expected. Of course, it was not possible last July to determine this figure with any precision. The figures on which the estimates were based were mainly derived from sales in the auction marts, and there was very little information available as to the numbers sold by private treaty, Dr direct to butchers. The average weight was expected to exceed 10 cwts. but, according to the latest information, the average will work out at something below 10 cwts., and that will affect the amount of the subsidy payments. Another factor very difficult to determine before the event was the extent to which the standards laid down by the Cattle Committee would render animals ineligible for subsidy. The percentage of rejected animals varies widely in different parts of the country, but the over-all average is not expected to be more than 9 per cent.
The experience now gained makes it possible to forecast the probable cost of
operations during the three months April, May and June, 1935. The only significant figure affecting this calculation is the number of beasts likely to be certified as eligible animals during those three months. The figure depends on the voluntary action of thousands of producers throughout the country, and, while we cannot foretell what they will all do, I am advised that the number likely to come forward during those three months will be a total of some 400,000. Making the necessary allowance for expenditure on administration, which might be put at £20,000, and allowing for contingencies, the total will reach £1,050,000, which is the total set out in the Paper.
The Financial Resolution which I have the honour to submit to the Committee makes provision for advances from the Exchequer to the Cattle Fund to cover the period April to June, 1935, but I feel that the Committee is entitled to expect not only the explanation which I have given of the reasons which make this extension of the emergency provisions desirable, but some broader appreciation of the situation as it appears to us, and some indication of the lines which His Majesty's Government have taken, and are about to take to handle this situation. I feel that it is not, perhaps, necessary to, deal with the objections which have been raised by Members of the Opposition, because, in the first place, there is no, means test in this Vote, as we may say there is no means test for the bricklayers whose industry also receives great sums from the public purse under Measures now passing through this House—sums not grudged by anyone in any quarter of the House.
Nor is it necessary to deal with the opposition of my hon. and right hon. Friends below the Gangway who have-claimed that the policy of subsidy is, wrong, and that the Chancellor of the. Exchequer is a lax guardian of the public purse. It looked all very well in, the happy days a few weeks ago when, they were not members of the united party rallied under the leadership of a great leader, who came forward with a. policy involving an almost unlimited expenditure of public funds, not merely in existing industries, but in the great extension of new ones, and who, in particular, has nailed his colours to the mast for an extension of something like 1,000,000 persons to be settled upon the
land. This is a policy which, as we all know, and which, I am sure, my hon. and right hon. Friends opposite, being students of, and great experts upon, agricultural subjects, will admit could not be done without either an indefinite raising of our present tariff system, or an enlargement of our subsidies to a point which would make anything I am suggesting here look altogether mean and ridiculous.
The House, with the exception of the immediate Labour Opposition, is committed to support an extension of agriculture. The only point of doubt is as to the measures to be taken, but I am sure that my hon. and right hon. Friends who press so keenly these matters upon us will not quarrel when we come to the practical details, such as those to maintain the agricultural population on the land in an industry which represents 54 per cent. of Scottish agriculture and something like 30 to 40 per cent. of English agriculture. It represents also an output of £200,000,000 or £300,000,000, and the major part of the livelihood of a great portion of those engaged in agriculture. Those who demand so keenly the extension of agriculture will not, I am sure, complain, at any rate, that Government aid has been given to this old and long-established—and rightly established—British industry of livestock and beef production.
It is impossible to survey this problem, or even the problem of all meat supplies, apart from the general provisions affecting supply conditions as a whole. There has been a call for a statement of the Government policy as a whole, and for an indication of the way in which it is linked with general trade considerations affecting world trade. The policy of His Majesty's Government with regard to food supplies may be very simply and briefly stated. It is to encourage the maximum supply of produce to the consumers in our markets at the lowest price, consistent with reasonable remuneration to the home producer. We wish to raise the maximum possible supplies, since restriction for its own sake finds no support either from me or any other Member of the Government or, I believe, of the House. We wish the returns to the home producer to be maintained at a point which gives him
reasonable remuneration, since without that, not only will the great capital invested, amounting as it does to over £1,000,000,000, fall into decay and be ultimately lost, but also, and far more important, those making their living by this industry—well over 1,000,000 souls—will also lose the opportunity of earning a livelihood, and also fall into decay and be ultimately lost.
Without a reasonable level of returns to the producer in this country, no extension of rural population is possible. We must assert that again and again. Without such a reasonable living no schemes except those for merely small clubs of people living upon their own industry, and consuming nothing from outside and sending nothing outside, is at all possible. Nobody wishes to see any lessening of the rural population in this country, which is only 7 per cent. as against 20 per cent. in a country even so highly industrialised as Belgium. It has to be avoided at almost any cost, and an extension of that population is possible and urgent. It can be claimed that this policy of maximum supplies to the home consumer at the most reasonable prices has on the whole been well maintained. The food supplies of this country reach consumers at prices which compare more than favourably with those of almost any other country in the world, and those who complain that the cost of foodstuffs is being raised out of the reach of the working classes of this country, or the consuming class of this country, are talking without an examination of the figures.
One example will suffice. The food items in the cost-of-living index were in 1930, when the present Government was not in power, 145; to-day they are 122. What then becomes of the accusation that the food supplies of this country, by the policy of restriction, are being taken away from the working men of this country? If that accusation were to be considered for a moment, those who in 1930 supported the Government when our food index was 145, have surely much more to explain away than those who stand at this Box when the figure is 122. The food value of wages, which in 1930 stood at 100, is 112 in 1935. If it had been the other way, we should have heard plenty about it from hon. and right hon. Members opposite. That has been concurrent with an extension of our trade, home and foreign, a fall in unemployment,
and in recent years an improvement in the working conditions of over three-quarters of the agricultural labouring population.
To secure that, it has not been necessary to go to the lengths which many continental countries have found it necessary to do. The Wheat Act has proved that it is possible to safeguard the home producer from the full impact of world economic conditions while maintaining food prices at a level which gives the consumer practically the full benefit of the enormous supplies pressing upon the world markets to-day. Clearly it is to the advantage of all of us if this can be done. The individual consumer is benefited, the producer is safeguarded, and the level of consumption has been enabled to rise to a point at which real inroads are being made upon these enormous mountains of supplies. The best possible conditions are created for bringing the world surpluses into consumption, and if we can find new markets, not merely abroad but at home, and succeed in expanding consumption among our own people, we shall have gone a long way to solve many of the problems which we have to face.
These are matters of general policy, but they are matters which, I can assure the Committee, are not, and cannot be, for a moment absent from our minds when we are considering any question which concerns the food of the people and the well-being of those who produce it. The policy is succeeding. Consumption is going up and not going down. We have been accused, in the case of milk, of organising in such a way that the consumption of milk has to come down and not to go up, and many complaints have been launched in this House about areas where the consumption of milk has fallen, and not risen. We are able to examine the figures as a whole. The consumption of liquid milk sold on wholesale contracts in January was 2,500,000 gallons higher than in the corresponding month of last year—an increase of over 6 per cent. This is not a negligible fact. This increase is more than the whole of the increased consumption due to the milk-in-schools scheme, which accounts for an extra 1,500,000 gallons only. Even, therefore, if you put at 1,500,000 gallons a month the extra consumption due to the milk-in-schools scheme, there is still another 1,000,000 gallons included
in the total I have given. It is not merely with words that the Government are supporting this policy; they are accompanying it with action.
The principle of the Wheat Act, is, however, not universally applicable. It must depend on the proportion of imports to the total supplies. In the case of meat, the Government stated, as long ago as July, 1934, that in its opinion a solution along that line would be the most favourable to all concerned. The policy which the Government desires to bring into operation, as soon as it is in a position so to do, is to assist the United Kingdom livestock industry according to the needs of the market from the proceeds of a levy on imports, not, of course, with a view to stimulating an artificial expansion of livestock production in this country, but in order to secure a reasonable return to the efficient producer.
The Committee will be fully aware that at the present time imports of meat are subject to regulation, in some cases imposed under Statute and in others under voluntary agreements. The Government has given careful consideration to the question whether action on its part in this direction will be necessary or desirable when a levy-subsidy scheme is in full operation. We have come to the conclusion that, while it may well be found that some regulation of the market in certain cases or at particular times is desirable in the general interest to prevent those wide fluctuations in supplies and prices which bring no benefit either to producer or consumer in the long run, the Government of this country cannot regard as a satisfactory permanent arrangement a system under which the responsibility for the regulation of the market would rest on us alone.
We have had perforce to regulate the market in more than one case, and while doing so, and in the interests of many of those who supply the market, overseas as well as at home, we have been subjected to violent criticism from those who themselves were benefiting, and substantially benefiting, from those regulations. That has got to stop. Those who are going to benefit by the regulated market must co-operate in working the regulated market, or else it is up to the people of Great Britain to take steps to look after the home producer and
wait until sense is borne in upon the world suppliers. There is a great deal to be said from every one's point of view for orderly marketing, but the orderly marketing of supplies which come from the ends of the earth to the United Kingdom is a task which, in the opinion of the Government, could best be undertaken by the overseas suppliers themselves. Our concern is the safeguarding of the interests of the United Kingdom producers. That achieved, we are of opinion that overseas producers should be left free to send such quantities to this market as they themselves desire. That is our case.
With regard to the progress of the negotiations, I am not in a position to-day to say more than that these discussions are actively taking place. We hope it may be found possible to reach agreements, but I ask the Committee to make provision for the short extension of the subsidy arrangement which is vitally necessary to enable discussions to continue in a friendly atmosphere. No good purpose could be served, as I said earlier, by bringing down the Guillotine and saying that what we decide must be accepted by all those who are trading with us. We should not wish that in the case of our trade with other countries, and we do not wish to impose that on their trade with us. We say that the regulation of imports which other countries wish to undertake, as in the case of wheat, they will have themselves to hammer out in the first instance, and the United Kingdom task is, first of all, to secure a remunerative level of prices to our own producers. With that object in view, we are carrying on those negotiations, and I think I am able to say to the House that there are indications that those with whom we are negotiating begin to realise the point of view which I have put forward this afternoon.

4.20 p.m.

Dr. ADDISON: I should like, in the first instance, to associate myself with what the right hon. Gentleman has said as to the efficiency and success of the administrative arrangements which have characterised the operations of the committee that has been dealing with this matter, and I would ask those who continually try to cast aspersions upon the ability of Government Departments to
assist in practical arrangements of this kind to note the efficiency of this organisation and how it has been proved to be so acceptable to industry. I derive encouragement for the hope that we can do better perhaps in the future by copying this example. With regard to the last part of the right hon. Gentleman's observations, what may perhaps be called Part II of his presentation of the case, I rather gathered, by reading between the lines, that he was confessing the failure of quantitative regulation. Whether he was waiting till Mr. Lyons arrived, I do not know, but, to my mind, he portended something which was creeping dangerously near to an import board.
So far as this particular Motion is concerned, it is, of course, a confession of failure. It would seem, after all this time, that the Government want another three months in which to make up their mind, and during that time this money is to be made available. Whether at the end of the three months they will then be able to make up their mind remains to be seen, but if there should be prolonged consultations, I imagine they will not and that, therefore, there will be a further £1,050,000 required. This really means that the quantitative regulation conception has broken down, and although the right hon. Gentleman has told us, quite properly, that the popular habit is changing, he is introducing this grant in order to encourage the production of beef, which he says the public is increasingly not requiring. It seems to me illogical, but perhaps it, might be better expressed if I were to transpose the right hon. Gentleman's words in the manner suggested by a neighbour on this bench, who said, "It should not be' temporary aid by the Government, but 'aid by a temporary Government'."
As a matter of fact, this grant does not lead anywhere. The House is no wiser as to what the policy of the Government is with regard to this section of agriculture than it was at the beginning. Thanks to the general review that the right hon. Gentleman has given us, I take it that I shall be in order in discussing the matter equally generally. Presumably the policy that the Government has in view is to give the producers a fair price for their product. The party to which I belong does not object to the producer having a fair price for his product. As a matter of fact, it wants a system of prices estab
lished in which a fair return to the producer will be the first element of price. We think the miner, or the agricultural labourer, or the farmer is entitled, because he does produce for the community, to a decent and secure living, but, as the right hon. Gentleman said, we profoundly differ from the Government as to the methods which we think advisable to attain that end. I suggest to the right Lon. Gentleman that he has missed the two considerations which ought to govern his food policy, namely, in the first place, that there shall be abundant supplies for the community, and secondly that the idea that you can give to the producer a secure, fair, and reliable price by a limitation of supplies has clearly broken down.
I want to say a few words on the subject of quantitative regulation, of which this Vote recognises the failure. The purpose, I take it, of the restrictions which the right hon. Gentleman has imposed or has discussed from time to time with the Argentine in regard to beef and other commodities was to try to secure a fair price for the producer. Let us examine why those policies have failed, because they have, otherwise this Vote would not be brought forward. If those policies had secured to the producer the satisfactory prices which they were designed to secure, we should not be asked to vote this money.

Mr. ELLIOT: I cannot have made myself clear. I said repeatedly that we had not applied this Government policy of regulation which was in our power, and that it was because of that fact that we had had to bring forward this Vote.

Dr. ADDISON: Yes, but the right hon. Gentleman knows very well that the arrangement with the Argentine was to restrict imports from the Argentine to a certain extent. The same applied to the importation of Danish bacon, and I think in that case the cut was 10 per cent. or 15 per cent. At all events, it was a cut, a restriction of supplies, and the idea behind it was to secure a system under which the home producer would secure a fair price. That is why it was done.

Mr. LAMBERT: It has not been done.

Dr. ADDISON: It has been done in the case of Argentine meat and in the case of bacon, and I will say why the restric
tions failed. What actually happened in the case of the Argentine was that the price for home-grown beef of good quality three months after the restriction was applied was unprecedently low. It went down, and the fact that quantitative regulation was a failure is the reason for this Vote. If it had been a success, this Vote would not have been wanted. Why was the price lower than before? It was because the housewife in this country, who had not any more to spend on Friday, went into the shop to buy her weekly joint, and, having no more to spend and seeing that the restriction had to some extent tended to enhance the price of the cheaper qualities, she naturally did not want to buy the dearer qualities. The result was that there was immediately a depression in the demand for the higher quality homegrown article, with the result that its price was forced lower down. As a matter of fact, any scheme which restricts supplies and enhances scarcity in any direction must necessarily, so long as you do not have an increase in the purchasing power of the people, force down the price of the costlier sections of supply. The right hon. Gentleman made a point of the decline in prices between 1930 and 1935 from an index figure of 145 to 122. The reason for that is that the purchasing power of the people has diminished, and as purchasing power diminishes the demand for higher quality supplies diminishes, and the diminishing demand necessarily depresses the price. That is what has been happening all along.
Apart from quantitative regulation being a failure, I suggest that it is immoral in itself. It is wrong to try and force upon the country, when there is abundance in the world, a system that restricts supplies. I am glad, however, that the right hon. Gentleman admits the failure of a system of quantitative regulation as it has been adopted, because the object at which to aim is surely to stimulate demand and to increase purchasing power. There are hundreds of thousands of people in the country who could do with a good square meal, and we do not want less beef, but more. When we hear the protestations of the Government about their anxiety to provide the people with abundant supplies, we are entitled to ask why in the world they ever went in for restriction. The scheme which the Government have been
operating all along has been to restrict supplies. If the right hon. Gentleman wants to have a system which gives the producer the benefit of a stable price, he must in common sense establish machinery to see that he gets it.
What happened in the case of bacon? There was a restriction of, I think, 15 per cent. That restriction was operated, as I gather the right hon. Gentleman still proposes to operate it, by the exporters. I do not know whether he has the Dominions in mind, but he says that it is up to the other country to set up its own machinery for sending its quota or for regulating its quantities to our market. That was a method adopted in the case of Danish bacon. The restriction was applied, and it was left to the Danish exporters to manage their exports. The immediate result was that you forced the formation of an Export Board in the exporting country, and as we had to take 90 or 85 per cent. of their supplies, they controlled the situation. The consequence was that in a week they put 2d. per lb. on bacon. They received more money for 90 per cent. of their supplies than they had previously received for the whole 100 per cent. By this machinery you put the whole power into the hands of the exporters. If we are to have a managed market, let us manage it ourselves. Why do we need to leave it to the exporting countries to manage the quantities that come into our market? The sensible thing is to manage it ourselves.
Let us trace this a little further. This idea of giving the producer a fair price by limiting supplies broke down in the case of bacon because every retailer or wholesaler had to buy supplies at 2d. per lb. dearer. He did not know what was going to happen next week, so he put on a little more, and by the time the quota had been operating a very short time the price to the consumer over the counter was 3d. or 4d. a lb. dearer. Everybody was uncertain what would happen next week. That must be so if you just leave it to chance. It is futile to think that by knocking off 10 or 15 per cent. something or other will happen which will benefit the producer. The thing that happened in this case, as in the case of Argentine beef, was that hundreds of thousands of pounds were put into the pockets of the middlemen handling the commodity, and it happened within a very few days in
both cases. The blind enforcement of some curtailment of 10 or 15 per cent. is not a sensible way of dealing with the problem. If you want to give the producer a stable price, you must establish the proper machinery for seeing that he gets it. Otherwise, you may be certain it will be grabbed, as it has been in both these cases, by other agencies.
There is another vital consideration which must go with any system which seeks to give a fair price to the producers. Two other things must be added. You must see that the other section of the producers, namely, the agricultural labourers get their share. We see farmer's representatives on county wages committees refusing to acquiesce in a rise of a shilling or so, although they have received £3,000,000 for beef during the last year, and other millions for various other things. It really means that the benefit which the right hon. Gentleman's system is designed to bring to the producer has been taken on its way by other people. That is why he is having to introduce this Motion. We are having to pay for the failure of his policy, I want the farmer to have an extra 55. or whatever it is he is supposed to get, and the fact that he has not had it is the explanation of this Motion. The farmer has not got it because the right hon. Gentleman has not devised the machinery to see that he gets it. Any scheme of this kind ought to be associated with control of distribution and price, Unless we can regulate and control prices down to the consumer, the same thing will happen as happened in the case of bacon. Within a month the price of bacon went up by 3d. or 4d. a lb., but the farmer did not get the extra price. A grant of £300,000 had to be made.

Mr. ELLIOT: I can assure the right hon. Gentleman that there was no grant whatever made under the bacon scheme.

Dr. ADDISON: It was a loan.

Mr. ELLIOT: Of which every penny has been repaid. Does the right hon. Gentleman call that a grant?

Dr. ADDISON: It had to be made. However, I am glad to hear that it has been repaid. It had to be made because the system was breaking down. The proof of its breaking down was an enormous diminution in the demand for bacon, and, while it was designed that the farmer
should get at the utmost 1d. per lb. increase in price, the housewife had to pay 3d. or 4d. more for her bacon over the counter. No policy can succeed while it is accompanied by consequences of that kind. Whether it be beef, bacon or any other commodity, the Government must see, if we are to have a system of stabilising food prices, that it is accompanied by a scheme which protects the consumer. We must control costs down to the consumer. If the right hon. Gentleman will dip a little further into the Labour party's policy, he will get nearer and nearer to adopting the principles which we commend. We say that if we are to have a managed marketing scheme, we should have one where we manage it through proper import board machinery and do the thing ourselves. Do not let us leave it to the exporter in some other country to do it. If we do, he will simply hold us up to ransom as he has done in the case of beef and bacon. Such a scheme must be associated with machinery here which will secure that the consumer is safeguarded. I am sure we can devise and work, especially with the excellent example of administrative efficiency which the right hon. Gentleman has quoted, a system which will control and regulate distribution and prices and safeguard the consumer against a rise in prices, while at the same time ensure to the producer security of price.
What security does this Motion give to any beef producer? It gives him a, further three months' grace. I remember once being condemned, when I was addressing a, Socialist meeting, because I was not revolutionary enough. I was describing the principles which I thought ought to be embodied in a system of import boards and control of food prices, and I was told that we ought to go much quicker. I replied to my interrupter, "Anyhow, it takes three years to produce a milch cow." Is any beef producer going to have any more confidence in planning the economy of his farm because he has another three months' grace from Parliament? It will not make any difference to his planning of his herds or his breeding system, because he does not know what the right hon. Gentleman is going to do afterwards.
There is another vice which is attached to the system of quantitative regulations of which this Motion is the confession of failure, and that is the embroilment in
which it necessarily brings us with our Dominions. I have here a cutting from to-day's "Manchester Guardian" which refers to the fact that the Australian delegates are to discuss these matters with the right hon. Gentleman. Apparently some rather bitter things were said about the Mother Country. That goes to show that the system of artificial restriction of supplies, when what is wanted is more not less, is irritating to our friends in the Dominions. I am afraid the right hon. Gentleman will find when the delegates get over here that the proceedings of the last three years have not made his path much easier. If we had a rational import board system, we could give all the preference we wanted without friction to our Dominions, but this arbitrary restriction of quantities is irritating, and must in the nature of the case be irritating, to our Dominion brethren. It is proved to be futile. This Motion shows that it is futile. It is the cost of its futility. While I am sure the right hon. Gentleman will get this Motion to-night, I think that the fact that Parliament is asked to vote blindly another £1,050,000 in the absence of any constructive long-term policy, and will probably have to vote more, only makes it more necessary that, some time or other before the next General Election, the Government should make up their mind what their long-term policy for agriculture is.

4.45 p.m.

Sir P. HARRIS: I shall not intervene for more than a few minutes, because there are many agricultural experts in the Committee, and that side of the problem will be dealt with by my right hon. Friend the Member for North Cornwall (Sir F. Acland); but the Minister has looked very pointedly at me, and I approach this problem from the point of view of the townsman and the consumer. Incidentally, I wish to congratulate the right hon. Gentleman upon his activity. There is a good deal of criticism of the Government for their inertia, but that is the last thing with which we should charge the right hon. Gentleman. He does stand for activity; rushing hither and thither from one policy to another in pursuit of a cure for the agricultural position. He is ready to try anything. Perhaps he acts first and thinks afterwards. I will not say that he repents as soon as he has initiated a policy, but
he is certainly not embarrassed by preconceived notions or abstract theories. He has indulged in a threefold policy and now, obviously, his Department stands for tariffs, the quantitative restriction of imports, and subsidies. Where he can he tries one, and if that fails he embarks on another, and if he is prevented by treaties or pledges—I suppose pledges have their weight too—then he turns to another expedient.
I have always had a shrewd suspicion that the reason the Government did not embark upon a duty on meat was to be found in the specific pledge given by the President of the Board of Trade. He made it very clear at St. Ives that though he was not against duties he would not agree to a duty on imported meat. My hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Bournemouth (Sir H. Croft) will remember a sensational Division after a tariff Debate three years ago, when he tried to disembarrass the Government of that particular pledge, but the President of the Board of Trade proved to be stronger than he was. Perhaps the Minister will make it clear whether the President of the Board of Trade has been thrown overboard, or whether we are now to continue with subsidies as the alternative.
The right hon. Gentleman twitted me with contradictions. He reminded me of my opposition to the restriction on imports of cattle from Ireland. I may be old fashioned in my attachments, but I have always clearly held to the view that if supplies are stopped the tendency will be for prices to rise, and, on the contrary, if supplies are stimulated by artificial means—by subsidies—the tendency will be for prices to fall. When the subsidy was before the House on a previous occasion I did say—people were surprised, but I said it—that the effect of offering a subsidy to the farmers to bring cattle into the market would be not to raise prices but to keep prices down, and I proved to be a prophet. Prices have not revived as the result of that subsidy. The right hon. Gentleman brushed that aside as a small detail which he might dispose of in a future discussion—I suppose in his next speech in Committee—but he still has to make clear to the Committee and the country, as I hope he has made it clear to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, whit has become of the
money. Where has it gone? Is it in the pockets of the farmers? Has the subsidy saved the agriculturist? I do not want an explanation from the former Minister of Agriculture but from the present Minister. Has the subsidy resulted in keeping meat prices low? Has it gone to the butcher Has it stimulated the bringing of extra meat into the market, or what has become of the money? Because these are big sums.
I am reminded that this is the ninth subsidy in 12 months that the Government have asked the House to vote, and figures mount up. We have a responsibility not only to producers and consumers but to the general taxpayer, and we have to be sure that this is an effective way of doing what we want to do, and that is to help the farmer to tide over the bad time through which he is passing. I always maintain, and I think it can be (.roved by figures, that the price of home-produced beef has very little relation—some relation, but very little—to imports from abroad. Chilled beef and frozen beef appeal to a different public. The price factor is most important. I have found by careful inquiries in industrial districts that when employment is good and money is plentiful the working man, in particular, always gives a preference to home produced fresh beef over frozen or chilled beef. One of the main reasons why there is such depression in the livestock trade—not the only reason, but one of the main reasons—is that the miner, the docker, and the worker in the heavy industries is either unemployed or on short time. If we take 2,000,000 consumers out of a market it must materially affect the price of the commodity. There are other factors, for example, the change of taste, the consumption of mutton in preference to beef, the great increase in the consumption of butter and eggs, fruit and vegetables; but the change in taste is not the only factor.
I believe the real way to help agriculture is to put the industrial population into a position in which it is able to buy the home-produced article, which is, after all, the best. Anybody with a full pocket will naturally buy the best article and the British is the best, because it is fresh, it is produced at our doors and has not to go through any freezing or chilling process. The real trouble is that the Government are looking at this problem from a wrong angle. We agree that
marketing and co-operation—which has fallen very much into the background—are the right line of approach, but what is most serious is the tampering with our connection with our Dominions beyond the sea. I have had the opportunity of reading the papers and some of the correspondence between the Dominions and this country. There is serious apprehension that the policy of restriction which I understand the Government desire to embark on—

Mr. ELLIOT: I do not wish to bore hon. Members by repeating my speech, but I thought I spent a lot of time in explaining to the Committee that I was not asking Parliament to embark on a policy of restriction, and that was why I was coming here for this temporary assistance.

Sir P. HARRIS: The right hon. Gentleman never need fear that he is not clear. He is very clear to me. I thought he did make it clear that he desired to do so, but was prevented from doing so by the Dominions.

Mr. ELLIOT: I did my utmost to make it, clear to the Committee that we were not prevented by any agreement, that we were wholly at liberty to reduce the imports from the Dominions but were not doing so because we desired that that line of policy should not be followed out. We were anxious that the Dominions and the other suppliers should send in their produce freely if we could insulate the home producer by a levy on imports.

Sir P. HARRIS: Now I understand that the quantitative restriction on imports is abandoned and that there is to be a levy. In other words, the President of the Board of Trade is to be thrown overboard, and now we are to have a duty on imported meat and the money is to be handed over as a subsidy. The subsidy is to be continued and it is to be paid for by the poorest section of the community, because it is they who eat the chilled and imported meat from abroad.

Lieut.-Commander AGNEW: I thought they ate bread also.

Sir P. HARRIS: Fortunately the working man of to-day eats a little more than bread. We do not want to go back to the old times. My hon. and gallant Friend seems to suggest that the working man is to be allowed to eat only bread
for seven days a week. But I do not quite understand the relevance of his interruption.

Lieut.-Commander AGNEW: May I make it quite clear? When the Wheat Bill, which embodied the principle of a levy on flour in this country, was brought forward, the Liberal party, now in opposition to His Majesty's Government, voted for it.

Sir P. HARRIS: I can only say that I voted against it. One or two of my right hon. Friends voted for it, in order to keep the Government national, as part of the bargain. They were not unreasonable. They were prepared to swallow their theories to a small extent in order to get unity.

Mr. ELLIOT: I thought the hon. Baronet was also prepared to swallow tariffs now to keep the Government national.

Sir P. HARRIS: I have never swallowed any of my principles. I am able to look after my own principles. Apparently they are not as elastic as the principles of my right hon. Friend. It is clear that we have now got it out of the right hon. Gentleman that the quantitative restriction of imports is abandoned, and that the exporters of the Argentine, New Zealand and Australia are to be allowed to send as much as they like to market—to flood the market, if you like—as long as the Government can be allowed to impose a tax on the foreign meat that comes to the country, the proceeds of the tax to be handed over as a subsidy. In other words, it is clear that the policy of subsidies is to be continued. This subsidy, I repeat, is borne by the people who eat the inferior article, chilled or frozen meat. Having elicited this point as my contribution to the discussion, I think I may now resume my seat.

4.59 p.m.

Mr. LAMBERT: The Minister of Agriculture has been congratulated, and deservedly so, on the efficiency of the Government department. My right hon. Friend the late Minister of Agriculture associated himself with that congratulation. I have never had any doubt that public officials can spend public money. They can always do that with great facility. Still, this has been done very
well. My right hon. Friend, who was a colleague of mine in Governments in days gone by, said he wished more of the product to go to the producer. I am with him absolutely. I want to benefit the farmer, the actual producer, and with the farmer the labourer. Whatever may be thought of this subsidy, it is essential that some help should be given to the beef producers to save them from ruin. I have never known the beef trade in such a critical position, even with the subsidy. May I trouble the Committee with a few figures. In 1913 the price per live cwt. of beef was £1 16s. 4d. The right hon. Gentleman has just given us a figure of 33s. 8d.; that represents a reduction of something like 2s. 8d. per cwt. as compared with the price before the War, and everyone knows how costs have gone up. Even the figures of my right hon. Friend are higher than ours in the West of England. I happened to be in Devonshire this week-end, and I saw the prices of beef at the Exeter cattle market. I will quote from the official reporter of the Ministry of Agriculture and the Farmers' Union. I take this from the "Western Morning News":
Steers and maiden heifers, super quality, 35s. 6d. per cwt."—
They are exceptionally beautiful North Devon beasts, and you cannot get anything finer in the world—
first quality animals estimated to kill out at 58–64 lb. 33s.; second quality, 30s. 6d. Fat cows, first quality 22s. 6d. per cwt.; second quality 16s.
Those are quite impossible prices; and I say that, knowing the conditions, the country and the very skilled men who produce the animals.
The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Swindon (Dr. Addison) has not talked about the doles to farmers. I was rather expecting to hear a lecture from some of the miners' representatives so I prepared some remarks on that. I was going to tell the Committee what doles the miners are getting, but will not, as the subject has not been raised. [HON. MEMBERS: "Go on."] Well, I will do it. I have stated clearly that the price of beef is below that before the War. I ascertained from the Mines Department, the price of coal from the pit head. The pit-head price of coal in 1913 was
10s. 1½d. per ton; in 1934 it was 12s. 10d. per ton, an increase of 25 per cent., not like beef, which is lower than pre-War. When coal comes to the consumer its price is very much bigger, but I will not go into that aspect of the subject at the moment. How has that increase of price in coal been brought about? It was by the Coal Mines Act, passed by the Labour Government in the last Parliament, by which supply has been regulated. If there were a full supply, there is not the slightest doubt that the price of coal would have dropped to pre-War level.
Last year 220,000,000 tons of coal were raised. The increase in price was 2s. 8d. per ton over the pre-War price and, therefore, something like £30,000,000 a year is being taken out of the pockets of the consumers of coal in this country and given to the coal miners. Having got that sum, the miners' representatives come down here and object to us poor farmers getting a very much smaller sum. There is not much comradeship in that. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Swindon told the Committee that as Argentine imports were regulated the price went down, but he forgot entirely the Dominion imports. I beg him to look over the trade returns for 1934. If he will take the figures, he will find that New Zealand and Australia sent us in 1932 1,460,000 cwt. of beef, frozen and boned. In 1934 they sent us 2,660,000 cwt., and that increase has been the cause of the drop in price here. Although our people all prefer good North Devon meat, this frozen meat does come—

Dr. ADDISON: Are those the figures for beef?

Mr. LAMBERT: Yes, boned and frozen beef. I am sorry did not bring in the trade returns, but my right hon. Friend may take it that the figures are pretty accurate. They represent 'almost 90 per cent. increase in two years, and that is why the price has dropped here. Argentine imports have, as he says, dropped 10 per cent. I looked at the trade returns just now. Australia has sent us an enormous quantity of beef this last month. In January, 1933—my right hon. Friend knows that the trade returns are only given for two years—the Australians alone sent us 46,000 cwt. In January, 1935, they sent 103,000 cwt. In
reality, it is Australian and Dominion imports that are causing the great fall in price.

Dr. SALTER: Does the right hon. Gentleman want to keep them out?

Mr. LAMBERT: I want the home producer to get a fair price for his product.

Dr. SALTER: Does the right hon. Gentleman want to keep them out?

Mr. LAMBERT: I would keep anything out to save the home producer. If the hon. Member would come down to Devonshire we could talk that matter out. As an old Liberal I do not like these subsidies, but something has to be done. The Government have been free with their subsidies, which, I am very much afraid, may have a bad effect on the Budget; but we must leave that until the Chancellor of the Exchequer unfolds his Financial Statement. I am sorry for some aspects of the policy of the Government. From an agricultural point of view Ottawa was a mistake. It may have been of advantage to some industrialists; I do not know, but I can assure the Government that the Ottawa rose has not a sweet perfume in agricultural nostrils. I hope that in these matters the Government will resume their fiscal freedom. Let us have fiscal freedom here. We want to encourage inter-Imperial trade, but we must have freedom. I am sure that Australia would never permit us to interfere with Australian trade. The Prime Minister of Australia is coming here. I have here what he said in Melbourne. There will be a very considerable amount of discussion, between the home Government and Mr. Lyons. Mr. Lyons said—this is reported from Sydney on 11th February, just a week ago:
Any attempt to curtail our exports must be resisted strenuously.
Unless Dominion exports are restricted British agriculturists cannot live. We have to get that quite clearly into our minds.

Mr. CHARLES BROWN: Breaking up the Empire.

Mr. LAMBERT: I am not breaking up the Empire, because I regard England as
an important part of the Empire, but unless Great Britain flourishes, the Empire will wither, and Great Britain cannot flourish upon a ruined agriculture. Let us get that quite clearly into our minds. What Mr. Lyons said was, in effect, "Unless you take our exports, we cannot pay our debts." That really means that the British farmer is to be responsible for the debts of the Australian bondholders. I object to that.

Sir STAFFORD CRIPPS: The right hon. Gentleman cannot both get paid the debts of this country and keep out the products which help the debtor to pay them.

Mr. LAMBERT: When I have to make the choice, I come down favourably on the side of the producer at home. I will go a little further into this question of debt. The Minister of Agriculture gave us figures some time ago showing that the capital value of the land of this country had decreased by 25 per cent. between 1925 and 1931. It was stated also that the occupiers' capital had also decreased by 23 per cent. I have had to deal with a case of Conversion 3½ per cents., in changing some trust securities, and I found that Conversion 3½ per cents. were issued in 1921 at 65; to-day the market price is 109. Why should there be that great capital appreciation for those who hold Conversion Loan, while those who work on the land have suffered a great capital depreciation? It is all wrong. If my hon. and learned Friend opposite were in office, and if he brought about, as he said, a financial crisis, something like that might happen.

Sir S. CRIPPS: May I point out that I never suggested bringing about a financial crisis? The right hon. Gentleman is under a mistake. It was right hon. Gentlemen on the benches opposite who said it would cause a financial crisis.

Mr. LAMBERT: I am very sorry; someone has been misleading me. A statement has been printed to the effect that my hon. and learned Friend said that, if the Labour policy is carried into effect, it will cause a first-rate financial crisis.

Sir S. CRIPPS: May I just correct the right hon. Gentleman? What I said was that, if a Labour Government came into
office, there would be a first-class financial crisis, caused by right hon. Gentlemen opposite.

Mr. LAMBERT: At any rate, I am glad to have an authoritative quotation from my hon. and learned Friend. I will leave it at that—that the present Government being out of office would create a first-rate financial crisis. I do not quite know what the policy of the Government is going to be. I presume it will develop as time goes on. But I want to warn the Government, and that is that up to the present they have been infected with a marketing microbe. Marketing is my right hon. Friend's specific, but I am not very fond of it. Up to the present, so far as it has been tried, it has created a tremendous amount of unrest—

Dr. ADDISON: It is not my scheme.

Mr. LAMBERT: If my right hon. Friend's scheme would put more money into the pocket of the farmer, then I wish he would infect the Government with it; but, as far as I can see, this marketing simply determines the prices to be paid by the consumer. I think the Government will have to reconsider their policy. I could understand marketing in some directions, but at the present moment, in our part of the world, milk is sold at a certain price and it cannot be sold at less. I think that that is wrong, but I will not dwell on it, because it would be somewhat outside this discussion. My hon. Friends opposite talk about free imports, but you cannot have free imports with fixed costs of production. There is no possible way to consolidate the two, to enable the two to harmonise.
Wages are fixed, and I agree that, unless you pay good wages to the labourers on the land, they will not stay there. Indeed, something like 180,000 have left in the last few years. Unless you increase the price which the employer receives for his product, he will not be able to employ the labourers. That, to me, is as clear as crystal. Taking wages at £80 per annum in 1925, if wages had fallen as the prices of agricultural products have fallen, wages to-day would be £55, so that to-day farmers are paying £25 a year more in
wages than the price of the Product warrants. I want to get the price of the product up, so that the labourers can be paid good wages, as that will never be possible unless agriculturists are in a position to employ plenty of labour. I have other things to say, but they can wait for other occasions. This, however, I do say to the Government: For agriculture there have been marketing schemes, but for iron and steel there has been a tariff—a 25 per cent. tariff. There has been no talk about marketing for that industry.
I suggest that import duties will have to be used for the purpose of equalising costs as between this and foreign or overseas countries. I regret it. I have never had any great faith that tariffs or trade agreements would bring great prosperity. But, in the conditions as they are at the moment, I see nothing for it but import duties, if you like on the same conditions as the wheat subsidy. There the bread consumers pay to the millers a certain price, to enable them to make payments to the farmer. It is not an unreasonable price that he receives. I do not think that anyone, even hon. Members on the Labour benches, would object to the farmer getting 45s. a quarter for his wheat. It is only a reasonable price. I think the Government will have to come to this proposal for a duty on imports. I was interested by the recent speech of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Carnarvon Boroughs (Mr. Lloyd George) at Bangor, when he said: We have tariffs; let us use them; you have in this market the great food market of the world; you could make almost any country come to heel on the question of tariffs. I have no doubt whatsoever that the Australians would reduce their tariffs. We have a trade agreement with Denmark, and here again the coal-miners are the spoilt darlings of the country—

Mr. PALING: That is why they get such big wages.

Mr. LAMBERT: They get better wages than the agricultural workers.

Mr. PALING: We want to see the wages of the agricultural workers brought up.

The DEPUTY-CHAIRMAN: I must point out that the Committee is supposed to be dealing with beef.

Mr. LAMBERT: I am sorry if I have transgressed. I will make one more remark in conclusion. I hope that this subsidy will be only temporary; the shorter the period for which it continues, the better; and I hope that the Government will give us a long-term policy which will restore some kind of hope to the agricultural community.

5.25 p.m.

Colonel Sir EDWARD RUGGLESBRISE: I entirely agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for South Molton (Mr. Lambert) that some kind of import duty or levy is probably necessary to meet the case of the livestock industry, but personally I do not believe that that alone will be adequate, or will give to the home producer that reasonable price level to which he is entitled and which has been definitely promised to him. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Swindon (Dr. Addison), who has experience in these matters, made a great point of the fact that in his view quantitative restriction has failed, and he said that that was the reason why the Committee are being asked to pass this Vote to-day. I think I am quoting him correctly. I should like him to consider for a moment what use has been made up to the present of the weapon of quantitative restriction. The only instance in which real quantitative restriction has been used so far is in the case of the importation of foreign meat, under the Ottawa Agreements. It has otherwise been merely exercised voluntarily by such countries as we have been able to induce to enter into some voluntary agreement with us.
I understand that the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Swindon is in favour of import boards. If that be so, am I right in thinking that one of the chief weapons in the armoury of the import board would of necessity be the method of quantitative restriction? The right hon. Gentleman, I understand, shakes his head, and denies that the import board would make use of quantitative restriction, but in that case I cannot quite see what function the import board will fulfil. If it will merely try to create a tremendous glut of superfluous foodstuffs over and above the requirements of con
sumers in this country, in order to wreck the agricultural industry in this country—

Dr. ADDISON: The object would be to assist agriculture in this country and to safeguard the consumer.

Sir E.RUGGLES-BRISE: That is a most desirable object, and one to which, I am sure, every Member in the House subscribes, but I cannot imagine how the right hon. Gentleman is going to do it by means of import boards unless he uses the weapon of quantitative restriction as one of the means. However, I will leave that to the right hon. Gentleman to solve for himself. From what the Minister has told the Committee it is clear that the level of prices received by producers for home-produced beef is totally inadequate. My right hon. Friend has stated that prices are now at the pre-war level or something below it, and it is clear that something has got to happen. Either the livestock industry has to be supported in some way, or it has to be allowed to fall into decay and ultimately to die. His Majesty's Government have come to the conclusion, as I believe rightly, that this country cannot afford to let such a great and important industry as the livestock industry in this country fall into any further decay than that into which it has already unhappily fallen, and, therefore, my right hon. Friend comes to the Committee to-day and asks for a Vote to tide over a period until, it is hoped, other arrangements may be made whereby there may be a future for the livestock industry in this country.
I hope and believe that the Committee will concur in the passing of the Vote. We in the livestock industry are asked to-day to produce beef at a price which will be very attractive to the consumer, but which is utterly ruinous to the producer. We have been adjured in the last few days to cut unnecessary costs. I feel certain that every farmer in England is doing all he can with might and main to eliminate everything unnecessary in his costs of production. But in the production of livestock, as of most other agricultural products, apart from a share of overheads there are two main costs. One is the cost of feeding stuff, and the other the cost of labour. The producer of livestock has no control whatever over either. It is difficult, therefore, tip see how he is still further to cut unnecessary costs.
The Minister alluded to the fact that there had been a shifting away from the consumption of beef towards mutton. I believe that is quite true, but another shift has taken place in relation to the consumption of beef, and largely of all meat. The consuming public are now able as a whole to buy better cuts than they used. It is a satisfactory sign from one point of view, because it means that the general purchasing power of the community has improved and, if one looks at the wholesale index figure of agricultural commodities which to-day, apart from the livestock subsidy and the wheat quota deficiency, stands at a figure of about 112, whereas we know that the level of wages has increased very far beyond that point, it is obvious that the consuming public as a whole is able, to buy, and does in fact buy, better cuts than it used.
What is the effect of that on the price of beef to the producer? At first sight it would be imagined that it was all to the good owing to the fact that a larger number of people go in for the prime joints of the home-produced beasts and, therefore, the producer of that beast is likely to obtain a better price for it. But, in fact, it operates in exactly the opposite direction. Although more animals are required to produce the prime joints, owing to the increased demand for prime joints there is a far greater waste of the inferior joints, and that is the point at which the producer gets hit. The butcher, although he knows that he will be able to get rid of all the better cuts, is left possibly with a very large portion of his bullock unsold. He says, "I have paid so much a cwt. for my bullock and I get more cwts. now wasted than I used to in the old days when I was able to sell every piece. Now I am going to pay the producer less because I am faced with a greater waste of the inferior cuts." Therefore, you get this paradox, that the shifting of taste owing to increased purchasing power on the part of the consuming public, which operates to make them buy the better cuts, is one of the causes why we have a very low price level for home-produced beef.
I should like to say a word in reference to the Government's beef policy. We understand that negotiations have been
in progress for some time past and are to be resumed in the near future with the Dominions as to the future regulation of our beef supplies. As I understand it, the Government's policy is that, if the Dominions are prepared to submit to a levy plan, there shall be for them a completely unrestricted market in this country. I feel bound to enter a caveat here. I can visualise a position when quite possibly the Dominions would agree to the imposition of a levy, the proceeds of which might be passed on to the home producer, as in the case of the deficiency payments under the Wheat Act, but unless the Dominions were able to agree among themselves some method of quantitative regulation, some way of dividing up the market for meat imported into this country, they would create such a permanent glut of meat here as would swamp the home market and the market for themselves as well. I believe my right hon. Friend will be well advised if he will consider whether it is possible, with all the facilities that exist for bringing in meat in every form from the ends of the earth, to maintain a reasonable price level of meat for the home producer in this market if you are going to allow the whole world unrestricted entry. It will be a policy fraught with some danger unless there is the safeguard of quantitative restriction as well as levy.
Hon. Members above the Gangway have really to face up to this definite point. The livestock industry cannot go on as it is to-day, completely unaided and unsheltered. If they concede that point, which I feel quite sure they will, they must agree that something has to be done. Do they desire that the Government should leave the livestock industry completely unsheltered, that they should withdraw this Vote, that they should say to the producer of beef, "We are going to let things slide. We have no further interest in you. Look after yourselves." [Interruption]. The right hon. Gentleman understands perfectly well that this Vote is a temporary measure until the long-term programme of the Government has had time to fructify. If he would deny the home producer this Vote, is he prepared to see the inevitable collapse that is bound to overtake that branch of British agriculture, the great livestock industry? That is the alternative. It is true that this amount of assistance that
we are asked to vote is not going to bring salvation, or riches, or great prosperity to the livestock branch of agriculture, but it is at least something to try to keep its head afloat until some more permanent and more satisfactory measures can be brought in. The taxpayer may not like to foot the bill for £1,050,000, but will he like to foot the bill for keeping a larger number of people in unemployment when by voting this money he will at least have done something to keep them in employment?

5.42 p.m.

Mr. TURTON: The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Swindon (Dr. Addison) said that after hearing the Minister's speech he was still at a loss to know what the Government's policy was. The Minister made it quite clear both in July and to-day that his policy is a levy. I found it very hard to understand why the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Swindon talked against quantitative restriction. Surely, if we have an Import Board, its function is to regulate imports. If you regulate imports, you have either to restrict or to increase them, otherwise you do not achieve your function of regulation. If you restrict imports you are doing the very thing, under an Import Board, that the right hon. Gentleman seemed to dislike doing. Yet at the end of his speech, when we all thought we ought to have heard some new Socialist policy of helping the farmer out of the mess, what we hear is that he would devise some machinery. He has a great deal of machinery up his sleeve, but we have not seen a cog of it. He talks about machinery. He ought to let us know what his machinery is, and whether it is the same sort of machinery that he would inflict upon agriculture as the ex-Solicitor-General would inflict upon the banks. The only machinery that we know is that he is going to put an Import Board to deal with beef. If there is an Import Board, there must be this quantitative restriction, which I am delighted the Minister has decided not to continue on beef. If we agree to a long-term policy similar to that for wheat, with a guaranteed price, as Members in all parts of the House, with the exception of the hon. Baronet the Member for South-West Bethnal Green (Sir P. Harris) do, surely also we shall agree that the beef industry must not fall before the long-term policy comes in?
I am surprised, when so many hon. Members have spoken, that not one has mentioned that this is not a subsidy. It is an advance. When the bacon scheme was not operating to the advantage of the curers, there was an advance, which was in due course repaid. This advance can similarly be repaid if the Government will bring in their long-term policy without undue delay, and if that policy operates as I believe it will. Let us see what the temporary advance is to be. The subsidy is to continue for three months. It has not, the Minister has pointed out, succeeded in the previous six months in bringing satisfactory prices for beef. The Minister quoted the average price as being 33s. 8d. The prime quality price last week in the local market was 32s. per live cwt., and I am afraid that, even with the 5s., it is a far worse price than we were receiving both at the beginning of the subsidy period and at the same season last year.
Where has the subsidy gone? It certainly has not gone to the farmers. I took the opportunity of trying to find out in London how far it had gone into other hands. I went to the butcher's emporium nearest my chambers, and I was told that in July, when the subsidy started, the price of beef was from 1s. 5d. to 1s. 6d. per lb., and that on Saturday it was from 1s. 1d. to 1s. 2d. per lb. I recall the Debate which took place in the heated atmosphere of last July, when hon. Members from the Labour Benches said that the subsidy would put up the price of food, and that it was unfair to the poor consumer. The result of the subsidy has been that the consumer has had the advantage of 3d. or 4d. a lb. on beef. We must not forget, when we talk about the price being unfortunate and expecting the butcher to have gained a great deal, that one of the effects of the subsidy has been that the consumer has had cheaper beef. No one would quarrel because the consumer got cheaper beef, but we have to ensure also that the producer gets an adequate price for the live animal he is putting into the market.
Whatever the result in the fall in the price of the live animal has been, it is clear that the failure of the policy of restriction has played a considerable part. If one takes the year 1934, it will be found from the figures given in the Trade and Navigation Returns that more beef of all kinds entered
this country than in the previous year, or even in the previous two years. In 1934, over 12,600,000 cwts. of beef came into this country, whereas in 1933 the amount was 12,000,000 cwts. and in 1932 12,100,000 cwts. That is a very unsatisfactory state of things, and one must congratulate the Committee that the Government are not going to pursue that method of dealing with the price of beef. That, probably, is the reason why the price of beef is so low to-day. If, as has been said, there has been a fall in consumption of beef per head, at the same time there has been an increase in the foreign imports of beef.
I want to put two other suggestions to the Minister as to why the subsidy has not achieved its proper effect. I believe that if he could institute some form of graded subsidy, he would achieve far better results than he is doing at present. He ought to raise the minimum level of qualification for subsidy. I will take the last point first. At the present time I understand that they are regarding as a minimum a killing percentage of 54. At this time of the year, and during the remaining three months of the subsidy period, we should have expected that the beef would kill at 8 lbs. to the stone, which is a percentage of 57. If you have this low killing percentage, you are encouraging farmers to put beasts on to the market which are not in the same condition of killing as they otherwise would have been. In farming, as in everything else, it costs a great deal more to get to a pitch of perfection, and I ask the Minister to consider the question about the killing percentage. As regards grading the subsidy, the man who is breeding and feeding the prime quality beef is really being hit harder than the man who is placing upon the market the lower quality beef. The consumer wants to encourage the beef of good quality, and I would ask the Minister to divide the subsidy as to 7s. 6d. for first quality beef, and 2s. 6d. for second quality beef. It would not mean to the Treasury a penny more, but it would encourage farmers to breed and produce a prime quality of beef. At the present time there is probably a difference of only 3s. on the market between first and second quality beef, which is far too small a difference to encourage farmers.
If this were possible, it would be to the advantage of the working of the subsidy.
May I also ask the Minister to consider whether cow-heifers, if after the second calf they are not of bad quality, can be included in the scheme? Surely the standard should not be, how many calves a cow has had, but whether it is good beef or bad beef. No one wants, and I least of all want, bad cow beef to qualify for the subsidy, but I am afraid that in my constituency the fact that all heifers which have had calves are disqualified from receiving the subsidy whether they are good or bad beef does cause a hardship. I ask the Minister in the course of the further legislation, which, I suppose, will be necessary, to give serious consideration to the question as to whether heifers which have had one or two calves should not still be allowed to qualify for the beef subsidy.
I pay my respects to the Minister for his very clear enunciation of policy. It is that they are not going to cause restriction and try to drive up prices by restriction, but they accept the fact that if the Dominions and the Argentine want to send their beef they must pay for the privilege. The policy will not harm anyone, but it will help the farmer and the agricultural worker. I do not know whether Socialist Members appreciate that for which we are fighting I We are fighting for a price for beef of about 48s. a. live cwt. If you take my killing percentage of 8 lbs. to the stone, you will find that it means that we are asking that we should receive 48s. for 64 lbs. of dead beef, and that work out at 9d. a lb. If any Member of a mining constituency wants to get his miners' beef at 9d. a lb. any farmer or farming Member of this House will be willing to sell him beef at 48s. a live cwt. and he can take it home and kill it and sell it to his mining constitutents at 9d. a lb. We have in Yorkshire great community of interests between the miners and the farmers. In good times we do well together, and in bad times we try to help each other. Do not let us have a feeling of hostility between town and country in regard to the beef position. Do not let beef down, and it is going down. It will pull down the miner as well as it pulls down the agricultural worker, who has a difficulty in buying his coal. He has low wages owing to beef being down. Any Member
of this House who votes in the Lobby to-night against the continuation of help to the livestock industry is voting against the agricultural labourer receiving a due wage and paying a decent price for his coal.

5.54 p.m.

Mr. C. BROWN: The hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Mr. Turton) began his speech by expressing some pleasure in the fact that prophecies, which he said were made from these benches in the heated atmosphere of last July, have not been fulfilled. Surely he must understand that we on these benches have to take his Government at their own valuation, and when they tell us that the main plank in their policy is to raise prices, we have to face up to what they say. The Chancellor of the Exchequer at the World Economic Conference made it clear that the main line of policy of His Majesty's Government in this connection was to raise wholesale prices.

Mr. HASLAM: Wholesale prices.

Mr. BROWN: I said wholesale prices, but the comment we made last July was that, if His Majesty's Government were successful in raising wholesale prices, inevitably at some stage it would be followed by a rise in retail prices. The whole speech of the Minister of Agriculture, as has been stated already from these benches, was a complete confession of failure on the part of the Government to implement their policy of raising wholesale prices. Therefore, I cannot for the life of me see why the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton should express views of that kind at the beginning of his speech. Our criticism last July was justified entirely on the grounds of the announced policy of the Government. The fact that their policy has failed is not our fault, but their fault. If their policy had succeeded our prophecies would have been true by this time. Their policy has completely failed. Therefore the Minister comes along this afternoon and tells the Committee that in spite of the subsidy, and of all the money which the Government have taken out of the pockets of the taxpayers for the fat stock industry, prices, instead of rising, have fallen between that period and to-day. He does not even suggest—I did not detect any such suggestion in his speech—that the £1,000,000 which we are being
asked to vote to-day will be instrumental in raising prices. He merely put it forward as a temporary measure while what the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton and other hon. Members have described as the long-term policy is being worked out. The Government have been in office nearly four years, and they have had short-term and long-term policies being worked out all the time. When are they going to deliver the goods? That is the question we are entitled to ask. When are they going to deliver the goods to thy agricultural community?
I am glad to see the right hon. Member for South Molton (Mr. Lambert) has returned to his place. I know that I shall not be permitted to make any extensive reference to the subject, because the right hon. Gentleman was ruled out of order, but I want to say a, few words to him about the manner in which he referred to the coal industry. The whole of his speech purported to be made entirely in the interests of the producer. He was thinking of the actual working farmer, I take it, and the farm labourer and, therefore, the speech which he made to the Committee was intended to have an influence in moulding Government policy, in the direction of doing something for the actual producer of fat stock and all kinds of farm produce. In spite of the argument he put forward trying to convince the Committee that the coal industry had been in receipt of a tremendous subsidy, the actual producer of coal in this country, the working miner, is now producing more coal per shift than ever he did before, and his wages are tending to decline. If the right hon. Member wants to do something for the producer, and not only for the working farmer and the agricultural labourer, let him join us, because we seek to do something for the actual producer in the coal industry, the working miner. That is all that I want to say about the right hon. Gentleman's advocacy of a policy designed to assist the producer.
There are only two points that one need stress. The first point is, that the Government's policy so far has completely failed. They have failed to deliver the goods to the agricultural community, they have failed to raise prices, which was their announced policy, and now we have a phase of political bribery which has been carried on by this Government which is unexampled in the
political history of the country. First, there was bribery in connection with wheat, then bribery in connection with meat and sugar beet, and now we have another instalment of £1,000,000. There is no other description of it than bribery by the present Government of their political friends.

Mr. HENDERSON STEWART: Will the. hon. Member define precisely what he means by bribery?

Mr. BROWN: Yes, and I will use the arguments which I have heard made by Conservative and National Liberal speakers. If Members of the Socialist party go to the country and suggest that pensions and unemployment benefit should be higher, we are invariably accused of bribing the electorate. It is described as political bribery, and that we are putting forward that policy in order to get votes. These subsidies by the Government are political bribery of their political friends. They are giving money ad lib from the taxpayers to the agricultural and farming communities.

Mr. STEWART: If that is my hon. Friend's definition, then every social or industrial piece of legislation by any Government at any time is bribery?

Mr. BROWN: I am thinking of the definition that is usually used by anti-Socialist speakers. I am retorting in the same coin, and I say emphatically that all these subsidies are deliberately designed to retain the support of a section of the community which invariably gives its support to a Government of this kind. The right hon. Gentleman comes forward with his various proposals and makes his speeches, and would make one think that he is readjusting the whole world economy, but, when we probe the matter to the bottom, he is really engaged in giving bribes to political friends in the country who support this Government.

6.5 p.m.

Major HILLS: The hon. Member for Mansfield (Mr. C. Brown) has no description of the policy of my right hon. Friend except that it is a policy of bribes given to his own political supporters. I think that if the hon. Member reads those words a few years hence and realises the immense reform that my right hon. Friend has started, he will want to with
draw that statement. I do not think the hon. Member realises that what has happened is that a complete change has taken place in agriculture, and that change is due to the action of the Minister. The change is now being worked out. It has not achieved completion and, of course, it is very easy to attack a scheme which is in the course of formation. But the scheme is there, and I prophesy, with very great confidence, that when a general scheme of this sort has been started for the whole of agriculture it must go on upon the same lines as those which my right hon. Friend has laid down, and that no Government, even a Socialist Government, will change it. They may develop it, but they will find, if and when they come into power, that they cannot change it.
The right hon. Member for Swindon (Dr. Addison) started by saying, in contradiction of the hon. Member for Mansfield, that he wanted a fair price for the producer, but he went on to make the usual speech from the Front Bench opposite, and to destroy one by one all the means of getting that fair price for the producer. I put it to the hon. and learned Member for Bristol, East (Sir S. Cripps) that there are three means by which you can raise the price of an article like beef. You can restrict imports, you can put a duty on the foreign article, or you can subsidise the home producer. Outside these three courses I know of none whereby you can increase the price, if you assume, as I think the right hon. Member for Swindon did assume, that the price is now too low. But the right hon. Gentleman went on to gird against quantitative restrictions, and he is going to vote against this subsidy. If it were a question of a tax or an import levy on foreign beef, I am sure that he would vote against that. He wants to give a fair price to the producer, and admitted that the present price is not fair, but he destroyed one by one all the available means for producing that fair price. He took refuge in a cloud of words. He talked about an import board, which is to do something, not explained, to deal with the question of a fair price to the farmer, and yet not to raise the price to the consumer. I do not think that hon. Members opposite are half as fair to the producer as we on this side are fair to the consumer. I assure them that nobody can argue this question or do a service
to the farming community unless he keeps in mind the consumers' interests. All the speeches from the benches opposite contain plenty of words in praise of the producer, but when the speech is developed, those benefits are taken away one by one.
Before I come to the main object of my speech, may I say one word on the debatable point of who gets the 5s. subsidy? The Minister has been very cautious. He said, if I understood him aright, that it partly went to the producer, partly to the butcher and partly to the consumer. I took some pains to ask the farmers, who would be the last people to admit that they had got the subsidy if they had not got it. I found very clearly that when the subsidy started, the farmers were convinced that the butchers were getting it, but, as time went on, I found some farmers who said that they got a part of the benefit while some spoke quite strongly of the advantage the subsidy had been. Since the latter statements were made at a time when the price was falling and the stock raisers' position was worse, I think it is very valuable evidence—of course, it is very difficult to ascertain, and it is a matter on which one ought not to dogmatise—that part of the benefit did go to the producer.
I welcomed the intervention of the hon. and learned Member for Bristol, East, with regard to what I think is the real problem. I believe we can, by means of controlled imports and home production produce just as cheaply, or nearly as cheaply, and yet give a good price to the farmer. The real contest is between the manufacturer here who wants a market in an agricultural country, and the farmer here, and also between the farmer here and the man who has invested money in railways, steamships or docks in a foreign country. That is the problem, and I suppose we shall solve it, not perhaps in the way the right hon. Member for South Molton (Mr. Lambert) advocated, by disregarding the fact that there is a problem at all, but by a compromise fair to the producer here, and giving such a fair return as will be a help to those workers who are out of work.
I gather that the final long-term policy of the Government will be an import levy on foreign imports, such levy to be used to subsidise the home producer, and I
should like to tell the Committee why I think that is the right policy. Will it raise the price to the consumer unduly? Will the Liberal doctrine, which is so often urged but which is never proved in practice, operate, namely, that any duty always brings with it a rise in price of the home produced article, and that the home produced article is invariably raised in price, plus the duty? Except on the Liberal benches opposite I do not think that that theory is believed. It is too general a statement. I question whether a duty does raise the price of the article by the amount of the duty. In the first place, if it were a small duty, it would not raise the price. A duty of 6d. a ton on coal would not raise the price here. Secondly, the competing interests that try to keep our market have a very important effect, because the more they are able to send in the more they will compete in price, even while paying the duty themselves. In the third place, we have to bear in mind the cheapness of production in the country which exports to us.
If we look at the question all round, believe that we can, subject to the consumers' interests, impose a levy on foreign meat which will subsidise a sufficient quantity of home-grown beef at a reasonable price. It is impossible to say at the moment what the levy would be, but I think it is conceivable, and that it can be worked out, that we could put your levy at such a figure as would bring into consumption the quantity of home-grown beef that you want to bring into consumption. It does not mean an unlimited quantity of beef. It might be an extended quantity of beef. Just as in the wheat subsidy there is a limit to the amount of wheat which can earn the subsidy, so in this case a certain maximum quantity of home-grown beef only would earn the subsidy. It might be a rising maximum. I believe it is theoretically and practically possible to work out a scheme on these lines which would not hurt the consumer. Seeing the great attraction of our markets and the interests abroad who are anxious to send supplies here, I think you could get an import levy down to quite a small amount, and an increasing subsidy on home supplies could fill the demand for home beef at the cost to the consumer which would be partly be paid out of the subsidy.
It would not help the home producer of beef to put the levy too high. If it is too high, up goes the price here. That is the effect of a high duty, and then the foreign importer can jump over the bar and pay the duty. If it is kept at a reasonable height, a, comparatively small percentage, I believe a scheme of that sort can be worked out. I wonder if hon. Members opposite would accept something of that kind? If they had only taken their courage in their hands, they could have claimed that the whole of the quota system and restriction of imports was really their scheme worked out—Socialist import boards. It was, but they are so unkind as to disown their own child. An import board must sometimes restrict; it cannot always increase the supplies of the imported article. I suppose that political agreements between two opposing parties are difficult, but I think we should try to get as much assent as possible from hon. Members opposite.

6.18 p.m.

Mr. McKIE: I am glad to be the first Member from Scotland to take part in this Debate, and in the few moments I propose to occupy I want to make one or two observations with regard to the details of the proposals now before us as they affect agriculturists in the northern part of the Kingdom. As is natural in a Debate of this kind, we have had some discussion on the principle of subsidies in general, and also as regards the way in which the subsidy of July, 1934, has worked out. Some hon. Members think it indicates the way in which the subsidy we are now considering in this Financial Resolution will also be applied. This Resolution is a sequel to our action of seven months ago. It is, perhaps, a somewhat unwelcome sequel. But I must qualify that adjective by saying that those who are intimately connected with the livestock branch of agriculture are eager and willing to grasp this or any other straw which seems to afford us any hope of winning through a difficult situation. The farming community have long been renowned for their independence, and their dislike of anything in the nature of State aid or doles.

Mr. C. BROWN: Does the hon. Member call £1,000,000 a straw?

Mr. McKIE: I am not going to be led away, but having regard to the peril to the livestock industry this sum of money, although it is large, is but a straw, at which we grasp in order to help us out of a very difficult situation.

Mr. BROWN: Will the hon. Member tell us how much he would like?

Mr. McKIE: I am not going to be led away into giving details of the amount which I consider to be adequate for providing help for the livestock producers. I would merely say this—and the hon. Member can draw what deductions he likes—that I hope this will prove to be adequate. The right hon. and gallant Member for Ripon (Major Hills) has said that the conversations he has had with members of the agricultural community in Yorkshire have led him to suppose that they are in favour of the way in which the subsidy of last July has been applied.

Major HILLS: It was not only in Yorkshire. I have talked to farmers in other parts of the country.

Mr. McKIE: I can corroborate what the right hon. Member has said, but there have been agricultural voices who have not spoken in such glowing terms of what the subsidy has accomplished for them. It has been my fortune, or misfortune to encounter many such voices in my peregrinations in the agricultural areas in Scotland. It has been said that the subsidy has not accomplished the marvellous things for the beef section of the farming community which were anticipated. I have done my best to point out that prices, although they have not shown such a marked increase as we would have liked, would have fallen much lower but for the fact that this temporary assistance was available. I congratulate the Minister of Agriculture in having carried us over a very difficult period indeed. There is no saying to what low depths agriculture might have sunk by now but for his courage and the activities of those connected with the working of the scheme. I hope that the money we are voting to-night will during April, May and June prove to be a valuable boon, and will carry us up to the moment when the long-term policy, about which the right hon. Gentleman spoke with such vigour and so definitely, will have been initiated. I hear voices behind me, some
times raised in our agricultural Debates, saying "Another subsidy." I hope there will not be another subsidy. I go further and say there cannot be another subsidy if we are going to retain—that is the great party which is supporting the National Government—the full confidence and support of the agricultural community. I suppose my hon. Friends opposite would call that a bribe, but I could not possibly agree with them in the truth of any such assertion, even if they made it.
There is a strong feeling among farmers that the livstock branch of farming should have been the first to have been tackled by a National Government possessing the doctor's mandate. It is often unwise to go back over past history, and it is certainly unwise in such a case as this for agriculture does not want a great amount of talk and discussion, but prompt and vigorous action. The Minister referred to the size of the livestock branch of agriculture; 37 per cent. of the industry in England and 53 or 54 per cent. in Scotland. Those figures illustrate, if any illustration be needed, the importance of preserving the rightful place of the livestock industry in our agricultural body politic. It is essential if the welfare of the workers in agriculture is to be preserved. Many questions have been asked by those who earn their daily bread by toiling upon the land as to where they come in in legislation as it affects the farming industry. As the livestock industry is the largest branch of farming so it is the branch which is going to call, directly and indirectly, for the greatest numbers of men and women.
Let me refer to one or two points regarding general policy and the prejudicial manner in which the Ottawa and Argentine Agreements are claimed to have operated, particularly as to livestock farming. All I can say about that is that those actively engaged on the soil do not quarrel with the principle of the Ottawa or the Argentine Agreements. It is not the principles that are wrong, but the way in which they have been applied. Members of the Opposition have said that this is a policy of bald restriction, but the Minister has emphatically denied that he is out on any such mission. He has said that nothing in the Ottawa Agreement or in any other agreement ties his or the Government's hands, and that, if necessary, he can go behind the back of these
agreements and inaugurate drastic restrictions and control of imports. But he thought there was a more excellent way, that of voluntary persuasion. The Government have said over and over again that they are going to let nothing stand in the way of bringing about such a state of affairs, that the home producer shall have the first preference in our own domestic market, that the second place is to be reserved for the Dominions and colonies, if there are any colonies that wish to have agricultural trading relations with us, and that then, if there is any place left at all, it is for foreign countries. That is where the Argentine comes in.
The Under-Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs heckled in the Ottawa Agreements Debate, agreed that that was the policy of the Government two-and-a-half years ago, and I have no reason to suppose that they have departed from it, judging from the Ministerial announcement this afternoon. The Under-Secretary went on to say that the figures laid down in the Ottawa Agreement were maximum figures, and that the Government at any time could reduce them if they wished to do so. The right hon. Gentleman the Minister was to-day a little apologetic, but he showed great firmness at the same time. Of course there are difficulties in the way of action, and I am sure that Liberals will agree, though they might try to make the point that the Government have been lost in a maze of vagueness during the past few months. It seems as though some Conservatives are taking the same point of view. The Conservative party, no doubt, is supporting the National Government by an overwhelming majority.
The doctor's mandate certainly included any and every policy which it should seem good for the Government of the day to pursue with regard to industry in general, and agriculture in particular. The public mind had advanced very rapidly before the 1931 General Election with regard to operating some form of protection for the great basic industries, and the public mind has not remained stationary, as perhaps the mind of this House has done since that great and critical election. I seriously suggest to members of the farming community that in the time between now and the next general election they should get together and inform their representatives exactly what policy they
think should be employed and offered to the electorate.
I shall support this Financial Resolution, not because am in love with the spirit of a dole to a section of the community which has always been very proud indeed of its independence, but because it is meant to carry us over while we use that spirit of sweet reasonableness and persuasiveness with the representatives of the Dominions, and Mr. Lyons in particular, before we take a firm hand with them, and with anyone else who comes in the way, and give the country at long last the benefit of the long-term policy about which we have talked so much and up to the present have awaited somewhat in vain.

6.35 p.m.

Sir FRANCIS ACLAND: First of all, I would like to apologise to the Minister of Agriculture for not having been able to hear his statement. I looked forward to hearing him, as I always look forward to any speech from him, but I was summoned suddenly to the Central Criminal Court, where I had to appear, not as a prisoner, I am glad to say, but in the witness box. I was glad to get away from that atmosphere, but I was too late to hear the statement of the Minister. I imagine he must have told the Committee how very badly the industry had been doing for many years, and especially in the last few months. Nothing that he could have said in that respect could have been an exaggeration, because the industry has been hoping, hoping, hoping against hope for some improvement from all the efforts which those in the industry believe that the Minister has been making on their behalf. Somehow or other, so far, the effects seem to be that prices which seemed all the time to be as low as they possibly could be, have tended to go even lower still. The figures of the Exeter market given to the Committee to-day are a dismal result of all the effort that has been made. It must be recognised that these men cannot turn from their stock production to any other class of agriculture. They cannot lay aside their farms, as the owner of a factory can close his factory if he loses money. Farmers must continue, whatever the price is, and the price is perfectly deplorable, of course.
I gather that the Minister made it clear that the subsidy given a few months ago had not had quite the effect that he had hoped. That is generally recognised. There is a puzzle in the minds of everyone as to where the subsidy has really been going. I shall not attempt to analyse that point. But there is another disadvantage of these continuing subsidies. Perhaps the Minister did not mention it and I would like to refer to it. In people's minds subsidies are becoming steadily and more and more identified with marketing schemes. People say, when one talks about a marketing scheme, "Where is the subsidy? We do not call it a. marketing scheme unless it has a subsidy." I have noted the authoritative criticism of the policy with regard to eggs and poultry which has been brought out by the Commission over which the right hon. Member for Swindon (Dr. Addison) presided so well for some time. The agricultural correspondent of the "Times" said, in effect, that it would be much better to let the industry go on without doing very much in the way of reforming or improving its methods, but just to give it a subsidy or some sort of protection or limitation of foreign supplies, and that that would be enough.
The other day, in discussing subsidies in my division, I said that I thought they were tending to grow, that they were in the long run bad, that the appetite grew by what it fed on, that everyone was always asking for more, and that I wished they could all be abolished. I was challenged the next night, at another meeting, for having desired to abolish all agricultural marketing schemes. I was asked whether I had voted for the egg scheme, the milk scheme and the bacon scheme when they were brought forward. My questioners thought that because I disapproved if subsidies I had denounced everything in the way of marketing schemes. Certainly there are two disadvantages in these continued applications for subsidies. First, as people get them their mouths open wider, and more and more people connected with other industries or other branches of the same industry expect to be subsidised in their turn. Secondly, the more that happens, the more disinclined people are to any reorganisation of their methods or any real improvement of their marketing, which
after all is the core and centre of the Act of 1931 passed by the Labour Government and of the later Act passed by the present Government. It seems to me that that is a bad tendency. Unless the centre of these schemes is, not a subsidy, not direct or indirect attendance on the taxpayer, but a real improvement of marketing methods, they will in the long run fail.
My second point is that we ought to draw this moral from these continued Debates—that none of these schemes of quota or tariff or duty has much effect in the long run on the raising of prices, and that the only hope for the farmers' prosperity is the prosperity of their customers. I have said that for many years, in season and out of season, like a voice crying in the wilderness. I was interested therefore to see these words in a leading article in. the "Times" this morning:
It will be admitted generally that, to quote from a recent letter from a British Farmer, published in these columns, the real problem is to reduce unemployment and to raise the standard of living of those whose food consumption, both in quality and quantity, is below that of the ordinary household.
I believe that that is the core and centre of the whole position, and that however well-meaning these schemes may be, and however many forms they take, in the long run the farmers' main interest is not in tightening up these schemes of restriction of foreign supplies for this country, but in the wider object of greater freedom of trade and commerce all round, on which alone revival and prosperity depend.
Let me turn to one quite different point. I know that the Minister must have been having extremely difficult negotiations. Otherwise he would have 'brought forward a reorganisation scheme before now. I do not know how the negotiations have been going, but one does know that the Minister must get an agreement with the Argentine and with the Dominions before he can put on a limitation of imports. I believe that the present agreements hold in the case of the Argentine until November of next year and in the case of the Dominions till August, 1937. Whatever the Minister does now, therefore, will have to be done by agreement. I would express the hope that, whatever that agreement may be, it will not include, as the Dominions may be likely to ask that it shall include, any
system which involves having to arrange a quota here. I can imagine that the Dominions might not unreasonably say that if anything is to be done which will indirectly limit what they can send us, we in our turn should limit what we are going to produce here, and not go in for a policy of restricting them while we ourselves expand beyond certain limits.
The danger is this: The present tendency to regulation and regimentation of our agriculture may increase. That is very much to be feared. If you have anything like a quota here you would have a definite amount fixed annually for production in each part of the United Kingdom, in each county and parish, and on each farm. That is not the sort of thing that can be done in connection with farming, for the industry varies from farm to farm, from season to season and from market to market. You cannot tell off a man at the beginning of the year, and tell him what amount he may produce and when he may send it to market.
I do hope that in this matter we shall call things by their proper names. A duty on imports is no less a duty even though the amount got from it is to be repaid to a certain class of the community. There is nothing to be lost by being honest about these things. If the Government try to wrap them up in some other way, say in the case of a duty of a 1d. or 1½d. a lb. on meat, they will only excite more anger rather than less. It is a duty, whatever you do with the money, and I hope that that is what we shall call it.

6.45 p.m.

Sir EDWARD GRIGG: It is clear that the Committee is generally agreed as to the urgent need for the Vote which the right hon. Gentleman is asking it to concede and that interest centres not so much upon the Vote itself as upon the long-term policy which, in the second and more interesting part of the speech, the right hon. Gentleman adumbrated. He told us that the long-term policy which he had in view was the imposition of a levy upon imports of meat into this country with a view to assuring to our own producers a reasonable remuneration. I agree strongly with my right hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Ripon (Major Hills)—who made a most interesting speech—that a great deal will turn on the size and extent of the levy and that it is vital, if we are to secure stable
prosperity and as I hope expansion for the industry in this country, that the levy should be as low as possible.
I cannot understand why we should always proceed on the assumption that production in this country must be so much more expensive than production elsewhere. One or two hon. Members in this Debate have spoken about the cost of labour. It is ridiculous to talk of the cost of British labour as a high element in production cost when we are discussing comparisons with New Zealand and Australia. It has no bearing whatever on the question. The elements of cost in this country are not seriously affected, in my opinion, as regards our main competitors by the cost of labour. On the other hand, it is obvious that the cost of production in this country will have to be carefully studied if the levy which the right hon. Gentleman has adumbrated is to be reasonably low. It is to that aspect of the long-term policy which has been discussed from various aspects this afternoon that I should like to direct attention for a few moments.
We ought to be able to compete on fairly good terms with most of our competitors. Our land is as good as theirs; we have proximity to the market and we enjoy a natural preference. Most consumers would buy English stuff in preference even to Dominions stuff if they can afford it. All these things are very much to our advantage and I can see no reason, except some fault in the organisation of our farming, which makes it necessary for us, if we are to compete at all, to subsidise farming in order to secure higher prices. Obviously we are not going to get stable prosperity for the industry on that basis. In the first place, high subsidies to maintain high prices are an infraction of the Ottawa principle. We are saying to the Dominions, "By all means protect industries which you can protect on a reasonable basis but do not exclude us by high and unreasonable protection for industries of your own which could not exist otherwise." If we take that line with regard to their manufacturing industries we have to accept it with regard to our agriculture. I do not believe that we can ever arrive at a reasonable agreement with the Dominions except upon the Ottawa principle, clearly laid down, that on both
sides protection is to be moderate and reasonable and is not to extend to industries which require very high protection.
The other objection, of course, to high subsidies and high prices is that undoubtedly they limit the extension of the home market for our own produce and seriously antagonise the consumer. It is, then, vital to examine the reasons which necessitate or seem to necessitate this high level. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Swindon (Dr. Addison) gave what is, in my opinion, one of the reasons when he referred to the high cost of distribution in this country. I was delighted to hear him refer to it and I hope that he will be a strong reinforcement to those who call attention to that aspect of our agricultural troubles. It is not that I believe that I shall be able to go very far with him in the remedies which he proposes, but I am glad that at any rate he should call attention to the evil.
It is not however of the cost of distribution that I wish to speak at the moment. It is about another and, as I think, the chief aspect of the cost of production in this country and that is the cost of capital. I believe it is keeping up the cost of production in this country in two ways. In the first place there is the case of the owner-occupier who now represents over 35 per cent. of the farmers of this country. More than 35 per cent. of our producers, I think, now own their farms. Many of them bought those farms in the boom which followed the War at inflated prices. Most of them borrowed the money and are still paying interest on that money at rates which are much too high at the present time. That is a burden upon agriculture which necessitates high prices and prevents our producers from competing at a lower price. I do not think that any policy which ignores that factor in agricultural costs, which does not deal with the high cost of capital but tries to meet it by offering subsidies in one form or another, can be a stable policy which will give agriculture real prosperity.
The Conservative Government which fell in 1929 attempted, as I was glad to observe from a distance, to deal with this subject by passing the Act which established the Agricultural Mortgage Corporation. For some reason, however, that corporation has not done very much
to reduce the cost of capital to Agriculture. It has only, I believe, so far managed to lend under £10,000,000. I beg the right hon. Gentleman and the Government to give attention to this aspect of the subject because it is being dealt with at this moment by all our competitors. Legislation for this purpose is going through in New Zealand at present. In New South Wales, if it is not going through, it is certainly predicted and promised, and it has been carried in Canada—and that on the top of existing legislation which makes capital much cheaper to the Dominion farmer.
That is one aspect—the cost of capital—but there is another. I believe that our farmers are paying far too much also for working capital, and that is one further reason why they have to be subsidised And why this levy of which the right hon. Gentleman spoke may have to be higher than it would otherwise be. How does our farmer now get working capital? In most cases by selling his produce to a dealer and because he needs money with which to carry on he sells on unfavourable terms. That is happening throughout the country. Again the Conservative Government of a few years ago attempted to deal with that question by means of the Agricultural Credits Act, but for some reason that Act has not brought very much help to the farmers. I must confess I think there is a strong case for investigation into the working both of the Agricultural Mortgage Corporation and of the Agricultural Credits Act. I dwell upon this subject because I do not believe that we can have any effective or satisfactory long-term policy until the question of credit has been thoroughly tackled. At present the heavy cost of capital is not only stopping all possibility of improvement, but is actually causing deterioration and is leading to further unemployment on the land. There are many farmers who know what they would like to do but cannot afford to do it, The research institutions are constantly making admirable suggestions which cannot be adopted because there is no capital available at a reasonable cost for the purpose. The same consideration applies to vital matters like an easy supply of water and drainage and a hundred other matters of that kind.
No one likes the idea of large loans being raised for the assistance of agriculture or anything else. But let us remember that the cost of the subsidies or repayable advances which are at present being made, is in the neighbourhood of £25,000,000 and that that represents interest at 5 per cent. or interest at 3 per cent. and a sinking fund of 2 per cent. on a loan of £500,000,000 to agriculture. I am convinced that the money could be better used in that way than in doling out these subsidies, which are necessary, I agree, as emergency measures but which produce a rather dangerous atmosphere in English farming and make it more difficult to arrive at a satisfactory long-term policy. I have spoken in haste, and I hope the right hon. Gentleman will not think that I have been either critical or dogmatic. I have not meant to be. Nobody appreciates more than I do how hard the right hon. Gentleman has worked and the courage and resource which he has shown. I am convinced that no one has done so much for English agriculture in any time that we can remember as he has done. These suggestions are made solely with the idea that they may be helpful. They are made in no dogmatic spirit, but I beg of the right hon. Gentleman, that before he establishes a long-term policy in respect of beef or anything else, he will have adequate investigation made into the question of agricultural credit in this country.

6.57 p.m.

Mr. DAVID GRENFELL: The right hon. Gentleman who has just spoken presented the Committee with a very clear alternative to the Measure which the Minister is about to propose and I congratulate him upon the very comprehensive plan which he has laid before us for the reconstruction of our agriculture. I hope he succeeded in impressing his neighbours upon those benches below the Gangway, but I imagine that their minds work on entirely different lines from his and that his conclusions and their are as far apart as the Poles. But the right hon. Gentleman was not dealing with the question before the Committee. He raised questions coming under many heads, such as the nationalisation of land and the planning of industry, but while his speech was very interesting and valuable, we have to come back to our muttons and I propose to address myself to the question before the Committee.
The Minister asks for an extension of time in order that certain payments may be made while he is making up his mind on a long-term policy—if there is any such policy in prospect. We have long waited for such a policy. We have pleaded for one in vain and apparently the Minister has not yet made up his own mind upon it and has not yet obtained agreement with those other people with whom he must, at some time or another, come into agreement upon this subject. We have still to be content with what is admittedly merely an expedient. The Minister gave us some explanation of why this temporary Measure is to be continued for a further period. He referred to the serious effect which any real change in policy might have on foreign trade or upon Imperial relations. I think he spoke what was in all our minds when he reviewed the possibilities of a complete change of policy as regards the relations between ourselves and producers abroad. The producers who come into competition with the agricultural industry of this country are those very people with whom we wish to remain on the best terms of friendship and mutuality. It is the people in the Dominions with whom we are most concerned when we come to deal with Measures of this kind and we can excuse the right hon. Gentleman's lack of haste in coming to a final decision. We hope he will seriously consider all the things to which he referred this afternoon before doing so.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Swindon (Dr. Addison) rightly pointed out the possible effects of this kind of legislation which is only a patchwork and piecemeal interference with the activities of a very great industry. He rightly referred to the failure to safeguard the consumer, and we on this side always stress that hon. Members opposite in their concern for the producer are apt to neglect the other party to the transaction, who is the consumer. The right hon. Member for Swindon quite rightly referred to the failure of the Government, so far, to safeguard the right of the consumer in any way. Nor have we heard anything to-day to suggest that there is any prospect of a reorganisation of the wasteful and inefficient marketing methods from which the producer suffers so much. Neither is there any machinery for securing that the farmer and the farm
labourer shall get the benefits of this scheme. The right hon. and gallant Member for Ripon (Major Hills) estimated, I think, that the farmers would get about one-half of this subsidy and that the other half goes somewhere else.
The hon. Gentleman who spoke last rightly spoke of the enormous burden of capital charges on this industry. He made reference to the very high rents. I think some £37,000,000 or £38,000,000 is paid every year in rents, and these are very heavy charges on the working capital of the farmer. I have no reliable estimate to guide me in this matter, but it is clear that an enormous burden is carried by agriculture for the use of capital by the agriculturist. This is a matter which should not be lost sight of in dealing with these matters. The Government must find itself in great difficulties—for it is a heterogeneous lot that we oppose day by day in this House. The right hon. Member for South Melton (Mr. Lambert) seems now to be the most rabid Protectionist in this House. He insists on more and more duties and expresses his conviction that he is now right where all his life he has been previously wrong. He is now a, full-blown Protectionist and wishes to see tariffs rigorously applied. Strangely enough he seems in this matter to side with the right hon. Member for Caernarvon Boroughs (Mr. Lloyd George). They agree on this although they parted political company long ago. The facility with which people appear to reconcile their differences and persuade themselves and people outside that their differences have been successfully reconciled is the miracle of politics in these days.
The right hon. Member for South Molton is now such an ardent Protectionist that he is prepared to sacrifice everybody to raise prices higher and higher. It does not matter a bit, he says, whether food becomes dear or not; the industrial consumer must be made to suffer for the benefit of agriculture. He is turning a blind eye to all the possible evil consequences which may ensue from that course, and he wants the Minister to declare for just the kind of policy which will suit him and which will also mean high prices and a high measure of Protection. The hon. Member for Maldon (Sir E. Ruggles-Brise) spoke of quantitative restriction as if it had not been adequately used. He said he desired that
method to be applied with the utmost rigour. In addition to tariffs, he would use restrictions or quotas. He would use every weapon in our armoury in order to achieve the end of higher prices and better returns to the agricultural industry.

Sir E. RUGGLES-BRISE: I must protest against the hon. Member's interpretation of what I said. What I did say was that in so far as quota restriction had been employed it had been employed only in part and that it had not been employed with the full rigour with which ft might have been applied.

Mr. GRENFELL: If that was not the hon. Member's meaning, I will withdraw it. At least, he urged the Government to use every weapon in their armoury and to take off the gloves to fight some imaginary enemy standing in the way of the progress of agriculture. I now come to the speech of the right hon. and gallant Member for Ripon who said, I think, that we on this side of the House showed no indication of any desire to assist the producer. Really, he is not entitled to charge us with that. There has been no evidence in this or any other Debate that we are not concerned with the prosperity of agricultural producers. But we do say that agriculture cannot be organised on these simple lines and that this is not a sufficient remedy for the evils of the industry. We urge that you cannot divide consumers from producers in a community like this, and that our interests are one and indivisible. The person who is a consumer of one commodity is a producer of another; and we say, therefore, that it is wrong and invidious to draw a. comparison between consumer and producer in this way.
We would rather say that we do not regard this and all other problems in the light of their effect on the individual producer. If the agricultural producer is to be benefited, he can only benefit to the extent to which he shares in the general prosperity of the country. It is no use stressing the occasional differences between consumer and producer. It is much wiser on the part of all of us to stress the interdependence of all sections of the people. We would welcome recognition by this House that the farmer as a producer of food depends as much upon the prosperity of those concerned in the coal industry as on any other section of
the people. Those two industries both provide commodities fundamental to the life of the nation. I claim first place for the mining industry, which provides the foundation upon which the whole superstructure of our industrial life is built. On that foundation all our industries have been founded, and, if we cease to be a coal-producing country, we shall cease to be a great industrial country, and we shall also cease to be a populous or powerful country.
We must not neglect the claims of the producer in other industries than our own. Those who wish to serve the cause of agriculture must find some means by which prices can be raised without making prices too high for the industrial consumer to make his due quota of purchases. One of our main criticisms is that this is a subsidy for the production of more beef, although the consumer of home-produced beef is not the coal miner or the men and women who work in our textile factories but the person who is rather better off and can afford to pay higher prices. Poorer people, because of their lower purchasing power, are compelled to buy foreign beef. It is no advantage at all to raise these prices so high as to confine the opportunity of consumption to a smaller and smaller class of people. What we need is to make it possible for a larger proportion of our population to buy and consume this class of goods.
I have a strong instinctive liking for the profession of agriculture, and I would warn my hon. Friends who speak for agriculture in this House to realise that it is a great mistake to imagine that it will be an advantage to raise these prices without raising the purchasing power of the masses of the people. If prices are raised too high, our industrial workers will be inevitably compelled to buy less and less quantities of these giods. There is no advantage to be got from high prices with a smaller volume of production. That will not help agriculture in the long run. I look forward to the time when we shall grow at home not from 35 to 38 per cent. of our food supplies but from 60 to 70 per cent. of our total requirements. I should like to see that and I think it is a possibility, but before that can be done a higher standard of purchasing power must be provided for the masses of the people not engaged in agriculture.
I would ask the Minister to tell the House how we are to escape from this dilemma. Does he propose that prices shall be raised to any appreciable extent? And in that event how can we escape from this dilemma upon which we find ourselves impaled? How, if prices rise, will he maintain the volume of purchasing power and consumption? That is our main ground of criticism. I should also like the Minister to answer a communication which has come to us this afternoon and which affects people directly concerned in the industry. We have heard about benefit to the two classes of producers—the farmer and the man he employs on the land. Here is a telegram which has come from Airdrie in Scotland. It says:
Debate on beef subsidy. Secretary for Scotland has repeatedly refused meet representative Scottish Farm Servants' Union which has asked opportunity lay before him facts about drastic reduction farm workers' wages. Farmers refuse meet farm workers to consider collective wages agreement for next year. Neither subsidies nor tariffs brought any advantage to workers. Farmers still taking advantage unemployed farm workers to reduce wages.
What is the reply to that? It is not a question which I have propounded, but one which has come from people who are as much interested in this problem as any hon. Member who sits here—people who are directly interested in the welfare of the actual producers of agricultural commodities. I shall-be glad if the Minister will give us a reply on these two points—as to how the Government will safeguard the consumer against unduly high prices and how they will protect the interests of the workers in the industry, both the farmer and the farm labourer.

7.15 p.m.

Mr. ELLIOT: I am sure that no one in any part of the Committee will complain of the tone and temper of this Debate. It is true that, owing, I think, to the kindliness of the Chair, the Debate has been allowed to range a little more widely than within the narrow boundaries of the Financial Resolution. It is impossible that it should not, for the very purpose of this Debate is that we should obtain time for further negotiations, and unless the Committee was seized of all the considerations that arise, it would be wrong for it to entrust the Government with the large sum of money for which we are
asking to-day. The tone of the Debate was almost summarised by the speech of my hon. Friend, if I may so call him, the Member for Gower (Mr. D. Grenfell), who has just sat down. He recognised in the Committee the remarkable fact of the difference in attitude towards agriculture which has come over the city representatives and the representatives of industry compared with that which existed only a few years ago. I cannot say how strongly I agreed with the hon. Gentleman when he said, "You cannot divide the interests of the producer and those of the consumer nor can you divide the interests of the producer of one kind of produce in this country from those of the producer of another kind of produce." It is true that all of us stand or fall together, and we in agriculture recognise that as much as anyone else. You cannot have a prosperous agriculture founded upon the ruins of other industries in this country, nor can you have prosperous industries founded upon the ruins of agriculture.
There were two specific questions which were put to me by the hon. Member for Gower. There was the telegram from Airdrie, complaining that farmers have refused to meet the representatives of the farm workers to discuss agreements. If he does not know already, it will be confirmed to the hon. Gentleman by all Scottish representatives in this House that when the original Agricultural Wages Act was drawn up, the representatives of all sections in Scotland, employers and employed alike, desired to be left out, and consequently the reason why there is no wage agreement in Scotland is the direct desire of the employed persons themselves. It may be that now a change of opinion is taking place, but it would be a little unreasonable to suggest that that change of opinion should not receive a certain amount of consideration and cogitation before it is acted upon. It is certainly a matter which is receiving the attention of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland, but I am sure that all parts of the Committee will agree that the workers themselves, who desired to stand out from the Wages Act system which holds throughout England, would not think it fair to reproach any section of the House with regard to it.
The hon. Member for Gower came to a fundamental question when he said, "How are you to solve the dilemma that if you raise prices too far, you bring
down consumption and thereby defeat your own object? "I would say that if we look at these things in a commonsense manner, I do not think we shall find these logical dilemmas so inescapable. The hon. Member belongs to the great mining industry, which secured an Act in this House for the very purpose of regulating consumption and production and held up prices. My right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer, backed by Members who sit above and below the Gangway opposite, put through a budget which raised the tariff on competitive fuel to 200 per cent., and that I call a fairly restrictive tariff. It was said that it was only for revenue purposes, but it has no corresponding Excise levy, and if we could get something approximating even the half of that, we should not be coming to this House for temporary Votes for small subsidies. If competing foodstuffs were subjected to anything like the same duty as competing fuels, as in the case of oil, I do not think we should be coming on this occasion for any Vote for some small sum, such as £1,000,000, from the taxpayers' pocket. The difficulty of the producers in this country lies in the fact that we are a world State desiring to maintain a world trade, and we cannot simply take an axe and chop off any great section of our imports. I know that to be true, and I was glad to find one or two hon. Members opposite admitting that in my opening remarks I had done my best to grapple with that position. They say, "How do you think that these negotiations of yours will come to anything? Can you give us any reason to believe that these negotiations are proceeding successfully? Is there any hope that this is not simply a series of temporary subsidies, and that that series of temporary subsidies is not itself the long-term policy?"
I call in aid my hon. Friend the Member for Leith (Mr. E. Brown), who sits beside me on this bench. We have been called by the hon. Member a heterogeneous mob who could reconcile the most opposing policies. Well, we have reconciled fairly opposing policies, not merely in the long struggle between Liberal and Conservative, but in the more immediate struggle between the coal industry and the cattle industry, of which we are two examples. Is it not a fact that Members for Welsh mining
divisions have every reason to be satisfied at the recent conclusion of a coal agreement with the Irish Free State, and that the agriculturists themselves were willing to sink their prejudices against the admission of any further cattle to this country because they realised that unless a man had a job of work to do, he was unable to buy a good pound of beefsteak when his task was over? I have had to defend that bargain on many platforms, and doubtless shall have to do so on many more, but the fact that we were able to make it, the fact that statesmanship was not so entirely bankrupt, the fact that the prolonged negotiations came to fruition, is to my mind, an evidence that in future our long negotiations here will come to a similarly happy end.
So much for the task of bringing about, by negotiation, agreements with these great suppliers to us, whose trade in turn we desire and whose friendship we vehemently desire to retain. There were other big questions of policy which were raised to-night and which will have consideration. We were told by my hon. Friend the Member for Altrincham (Sir E. Grigg) that we should turn our attention more closely to credit, that high charges on capital, high charges for the use of capital, as in rent, are heavy burdens on the producer. We shall certainly give these matters our closest attention. Whether these charges do more than replace the capital which is being used in agriculture I sometimes doubt. I do not think the charges are exorbitant for the replacement of the equipment of farming, and if we gave capital under that rate, we should in effect be giving a subsidy which would be almost as frank a subsidy as if I were to come here, as I am coming here, and ask the House to vote me £1,000,000. If there were any foundation for the proposition that a greater supply of capital at better rates would lead to an improvement in the condition of agriculture, we should be most foolish if we did not give that proposition our closest attention.
The right hon. Member for Swindon (Dr. Addison) indicated that all would be well if we had a good Import Board. I do not know any more fertile ground of friction than to refuse a man an order which he thinks he has a perfect right to give and when he cannot argue about the refusal. My fear of an Import Board is that, if we order in large quantities
from abroad, we cannot buy all the supplies brought to us, and that the will of the board in accepting certain orders and rejecting others will be interpreted as a most drastic kind of quota and a wretched interference and will, I fear, lead to even greater friction than we may get at the present time. I was glad to find that the hon. Member for South-West Bethnal Green (Sir P. Harris) had correctly grasped the import of the declaration of July, 1934, and the numerous speeches which we have since made, that if we can change from a system where the whole odium of regulating supplies falls on us to a system whereby they can be regulated among the various suppliers of this market, where we insulate our home producer and release him from the full weight of world conditions, we shall be satisfied. That is our policy, and he correctly expressed it. We are not asked, however, to compete on equal terms, but on terms not merely of depreciated currency and subsidy abroad,

but very often of world prices far below the cost of production even in the cheapest countries which are producing now; and it is no help to this country or any other country to allow all the countries concerned to rattle themselves into bankruptcy.

I think it would be a pity if the Committee were not now to come to a decision. The right hon. Member for North Cornwall (Sir F. Acland) will, I am sure, pardon my not going at length into his remarks, the more so as he said himself that he had not the advantage of being present during the earlier stages of this Debate. As I said, none of us can complain of the reception which the Committee has given to this Vote, and if we can sustain the same temper in other agricultural Debates that are before us, we shall go far, here in this House, towards framing the long-term policies for agriculture which we all desire.

Question put.

The Committee divided: Ayes, 196; Noes, 37.

Division No. 49.]
AYES.
[7.29 p.m.


Acland-Troyte, Lieut.-Colonel
Croom-Johnson, R. P.
Hellgers, Captain F. F. A.


Agnew, Lieut.-Com. P. G.
Cross, R. H.
Henderson. Sir Vivian L. (Chelmsford)


Allen, William (Stoke-on-Trent)
Cruddas, Lieut.-Colonel Bernard
Herbert, Major J. A. (Monmouth)


Assheton, Ralph
Davidson, Rt. Hon. J. C. C.
Hills, Major Rt. Hon. John Waller


Atholl, Duchess of
Davies, Edward C. (Montgomery)
Hore-Belisha, Leslie


Baldwin, Rt. Hon. Stanley
Davies, Maj. Geo. F.(Somerset, Yeovil)
Hornby, Frank


Barclay-Harvey, C. M.
Denville, Alfred
Horsbrugh, Florence


Barrie, Sir Charles Coupar
Dickie, John P.
Hume, Sir George Hopwood


Beaumont, Hon. R.E.B. (Portsm'th, C.)
Donner, P. W.
Hunter, Capt. M. J. (Brigg)


Bennett, Capt. Sir Ernest Nathaniel
Drewe, Cedric
Jones, Sir G. W. H. (Stoke New'gton)


Blinded, James
Duckworth, George A. V.
Kerr, Lieut.-Col. Charles (Montrose)


Boulton, W. W.
Dugdale, Captain Thomas Lionel
Kirkpatrick, William M.


Bowyer, Capt. Sir George E. W.
Duncan, James A. L. (Kensington, N.)
Knox, Sir Alfred


Boyd-Carpenter, Sir Archibald
Dunglass, Lord
Lamb, Sir Joseph Quinton


Braithwaite, Maj. A. N. (Yorks, E. R.)
Eden, Rt. Hon. Anthony
Lambert, Rt. Hon. George


Brass, Captain Sir William
Elliot, Rt. Hon. Walter
Latham, Sir Herbert Paul


Briscoe, Capt Richard George
Elliston, Captain George Sampson
Law, Sir Alfred


Broadbent, Colonel John
Eimley, Viscount
Leech, Dr. J. W.


Brocklebank, C. E. R.
Emrys-Evans, P. V.
Lees-Jones, John


Brown, Ernest (Leith)
Everard, W. Lindsay
Leighton, Major B. E. P.


Brown, Brig.-Gen. H. C.(Berks., Newb'y)
Fielden, Edward Brocklehurst
Levy, Thomas


Buchan, John
Ford, Sir Patrick J.
Liddall, Walter S.


Burnett, John George
Fox, Sir Gifford
Lindsay, Noel Ker


Campbell, Vice-Admiral G. (Burnley)
Fraser, Captain Sir Ian
Llewellin, Major John J.


Campbell-Johnston, Malcolm
Fremantle, Sir Francis
Lloyd, Geoffrey


Caporn, Arthur Cecil
Fuller, Captain A. G.
Lockwood, John C. (Hackney, C.)


Carver, Major William H.
Ganzonl, Sir John
Loftus, Pierce C.


Cautley, Sir Henry S.
Gilmour. Lt.-Col. Rt. Hon. Sir John
Mabane, William


Cazalet, Thelma (Islington, E.)
Gluckstein, Louie Halle
MacAndrew, LL-Col. C. G. (Partick)


Chamberlain, Rt. Hon. Sir J.A.(Birm., W)
Glyn, Major Sir Ralph G. C.
McEwen, Captain J. H. F.


Chamberlain, Rt. Hon. N. (Edgbaston)
Goff, Sir Park
McKie, John Hamilton


Chapman, Sir Samuel (Edinburgh, S.)
Goodman, Colonel Albert W.
McLean, Major Sir Alan


Chorlton, Alan Ernest Leofric
Gower, Sir Robert
Maitland, Adam


Churchill, Rt. Hon. Winston Spencer
Graham, Sir F. Fergus (C'mb'rl'd. N.)
Makins, Brigadier-General Ernest


Clarry, Reginald George
Gretton, Colonel Rt. Hon. John
Margesson, Capt. Rt. Hon. H. D. R.


Colfox, Major William Philip
Grigg, Sir Edward
Martin, Thomas B.


Conant, R. J. E.
Gunston, Captain D. W.
Mason, Col. Glyn K. (Croydon, N.)


Cook, Thomas A.
Hamilton, Sir George (Ilford)
Mayhew, Lieut.-Colonel John


Courtauld, Major John Sewell
Hanbury, Cecil
Meller, Sir Richard James


Courthope, Colonel Sir George L.
Hannon, Patrick Joseph Henry
Mills, Major J. D. (New Forest)


Craddock, Sir Reginald Henry
Harbord, Arthur
Mitchell, Sir W. Lane (Streatham)


Croft, Brigadier-General Sir H.
Harvey, Major Sir Samuel (Totnes)
Monsell, Rt. Hon. Sir B. Eyres


Crooke, J. Smedley
Haslam, Henry (Horncastle)
Morris-Jones, Dr. J. H. (Denbigh)


Crookshank, Capt. H. C. (Gainsb'ro)
Haslam, Sir John (Bolton)
Morrison, William Shepherd


Muirhead, Lieut.-Colonel A. J.
Rutherford, John (Edmonton)
Train, John


Munro, Patrick
Rutherford, Sir John Hugo (Liverp'l)
Tree, Ronald


Nation, Brigadier-General J. J. H
Samuel, M. R. A. (W'ds'wth, Putney).
Tufnell, Lieut.-Commander R. L.


Nicholson, Rt. Hn. W. G. (Petersf'ld)
Samuel, Sir Arthur Michael (F'nham)
Turton, Robert Hugh


O'Donovan, Dr. William James
Sanderson, Sir Frank Barnard
Wallace, Captain D. E. (Hornsey)


Peake, Osbert
Shaw, Helen B. (Lanark, Bothwell)
Ward, Lt.-Col. Sir A. L. (Hull)


Pearson, William G.
Shepperson, Sir Ernest W.
Ward, Irene Mary Bewick (Wallsend)


Peat, Charles U.
Shute, Colonel Sir John
Wedderburn, Henry James Scrymgeour


Petherick, M
Skelton. Archibald Noel
Williams, Charles (Devon, Torquay)


Peto, Geoffrey K.(W'verh'pt'n, Bllst'n)
Somervell, Sir Donald
Williams, Herbert G. (Croydon, S.)


Procter, Major Henry Adam
Somerville, Annesley A. (Windsor)
Willoughby de Eresby, Lord


Raikes, Henry V. A. M.
Sotheron-Estcourt, Captain T. E.
Wilson, Lt.-Col. Sir Arnold (Hertf'd)


Ramsay, Capt. A. H. M. (Midlothian)
Spencer, Captain Richard A.
Wilson, Clyde T. (West Toxteth)


Ramsay, T. B. W. (Western Isles)
Spens, William Patrick
Wise, Alfred R.


Ramsden, Sir Eugene
Stanley, Rt. Hon. Lord (Fylde)
Wolmer, Rt. Hon. Viscount


Reed, Arthur C. (Exeter)
Stanley, Rt. Hon. Oliver (W'morland)
Womersley, sir Walter


Remer, John R.
Stewart, J. Henderson (Fife, E.)
Worthington, Dr. John V.


Rickards, George William
Stuart, Hon. J. (Moray and Nairn)
Young, Rt. Hon. Sir Hilton (S'v'noaks)


Ropner, Colonel L.
Sugden, Sir Wilfrid Hart



Rosbotham, Sir Thomas
Thomas, James P. L. (Hereford)
TELLERS FOR THE AYES.—


Ross, Ronald D.
Thomas, Major L. B. (King's Norton)
Sir George Penny and Sir Victor


Ross Taylor, Walter (Woodbridge)
Thomson, Sir Frederick Charles
Warrender.


Ruggles-Brise, Colonel Sir Edward
Thorp, Linton Theodore



NOES


Addison, Rt. Hon. Dr. Christopher
Hall, George H. (Merthyr Tydvil)
Rathbone, Eleanor


Brown, C. W. E. (Notts., Mansfield)
Harris, Sir Percy
Rea, Walter Russell


Cocks, Frederick Seymour
John, William
Salter, Dr. Alfred


Cripps, Sir Stafford
Johnstone, Harcourt (S. Shields)
Samuel, Rt. Hon. Sir H. (Darwen)


Daggar, George
Jones, Morgan (Caerphilly)
Smith, Tom (Normanton)


Davies, Rhys John (Westhoughton)
Lansbury, Rt. Hon. George
Strauss, G. R. (Lambeth, North)


Edwards, Charles
Lawson, John James
Thorne, William James


Foot, Dingle (Dundee)
Lunn, William
Tinker, John Joseph


Gardner, Benjamin Walter
Macdonald, Gordon (Ince)
White, Henry Graham


Greenwood, Rt. Hon. Arthur
Maclean, Neil (Glasgow, Govan)
Wilmot, John


Grenfell, David Rees (Glamorgan)
Mainwaring, William Henry
Young, Ernest J. (Middlesbrough, E.)


Griffiths, George A. (Yorks, W. Riding)
Milner, Major James



Grundy, Thomas W.
Nathan, Major H. L.
TELLERS FOR THE NOES.—




Mr. Groves and Mr. Paling.


Question put, and agreed to.

Resolution to be reported To-morrow.

PRIVATE BUSINESS.

METROPOLITAN WATER BOARD BILL (By Order).

7.40 p.m.

Sir ARCHIBALD BOYD-CARPENTER: I beg to move,
That it be an Instruction to the Committee to leave out Work No. 1, Work No. 2, and Work No. 3 from Clause 5 of the Bill.
I move this Instruction with some reluctance, but with some reason. I admit that the activities of such a body as the Metropolitan Water Board are entitled to our consideration, but, on the other hand, there are other activities throughout the country that are entitled to the same consideration. Works Nos. 1, 2 and 3 which are mentioned in the Instruction would affect the activities of one of the most remarkable research farms in the country. It is not large in area, but it is very large in the estimation of the public. It has been developed for a period of years and devoted purely to research work. Its
work has met with the approval of great scientific societies in this country, such as the Royal Society, the Geological Society and the Scientific Development Society. Each one has gone down and witnessed the experiments that have been carried on on that farm, and it is an extraordinary thing to me that at this time, when the country is talking so much about agricultural development and the encouragement of agriculture, this farm should be put at the disposal of the Water Board with a view to its permanent elimination. The farm has been set up its an area where, after long consideration, the soil has been found to be congenial and where the activities of the people operating the farm have proved beneficial to science and to the world.
The farm is small in area, comprising 187 acres, but in that area many curious things are being developed. There is one acre under glass, where every experiment in the growing of vegetables that will militate against the importation of foreign vegetables is carried out. There are three acres under frames, and miles of water tubes under the land so that every experiment can be made with a view to the development of the agricul
tural industry in this country. It is calmly suggested that after this farm has been in existence since 1909 it should be eliminated and handed over to the not very essential needs of water in that particular area. There are many opportunities for establishing waterworks elsewhere, and if anyone travels down the valley of the Thames he can see many suitable places for such development. It is peculiarly objectionable to find the argument being put forward that this site is essential, when we know that for experimental research into agriculture it has the soil suitable for the purpose. The particular soil of a particular area is the desiderata for such an undertaking, whereas, as regards waterworks, so long as there is clay or other suitable formations, it is possible to meet the immediate needs of mankind for water. This is being done, although it is not proposed, at this immediate juncture, to construct these works.
Meantime, what will be the disaster to this experimental research farm? From the moment that the scheme is proposed the development of research work there is held up. People cannot go on with research work and development when they are told from day to day that Parliament may at any time and in any way give power to this board to oust them from the farm. Even supposing the Metropolitan Water Board do not propose to erect their works at the present moment, the proposal militates against any possibility of development or success on this research farm, because no longer will those running it have the encouragement or the support of anybody outside to go on with it. At a time when we are saying that we must devote our attention to agriculture as a means of solving many of our problems, it is absurd to suggest that one of the greatest research farms is to be obliterated—held to ransom for a period of years and finally put out of existence. The man and those associated with this farm have already been turned out in years gone by because of what were called developments in one part of the country and another, and now, at long last, after he has developed this farm and maintained it to the admiration of all people of scientific knowledge, making it a place to which people can go to see what can be done, he is to be warned off, told that he is not allowed
to go on with it. I agree that the man is a business man, but he is a research man, and he has got all the experience and the right people with him.
There is permanent employment there in research work. There are research men working there apart from the ordinary employés. They are to be kicked out and the whole result of their endeavours is to be hurled away and cast into the dustbin. Is that quite right when we are talking of what should be done to relieve unemployment? The farm is an implement of encouragement to agriculture in this country. Last year 600,000 crates of vegetabes were sent out from that farm, 140,000 of them being crates of lettuces at a time when we had to import from abroad the lettuces we did not produce in our own land. That is a wonderful tribute to the acumen, energy and knowledge of the people on the farm. When we talk so much about the importation of foreign foodstuffs and vegetables we ought to consider those who, by their genius and activity, have done something to militate against the perpetual incursion of these things from abroad.
But it would be wrong for me to go on with a speech—though I think it will be of interest to the House, whatever differences of opinion there may be—and I would only suggest that hon. Members should consider whether it is right to destroy at one fell swoop, or to hold to ransom, one particular area in this country where the soil has proved its value by these experiments—to throw that away when the Metropolitan Water Board can look right down the whole Valley of the Thames and find areas where they can put up what they consider necessary for potential water supplies in the future. What is the real argument which they put forward? It is a very curious fact that they submit that
any difference of opinion as to the suitability of the sites selected for the purpose of the proposed storage reservoirs, or as to the alleged availability of other sites equally suitable, is a matter which can only be determined satisfactorily by a Committee after hearing technical and other evidence.
Then why do they try the case beforehand? They only gave notice at the end of last year that they were going to do this thing. Is it not rather hard on this man, with his technical knowledge and experimental staff, that the board should
act in this way? I submit with all humility that while it may be impossible for the House to accept this Instruction they should not rule out consideration of this man's experiment, which has been of vast value to the country and great use to the individual employés and to the very large number of people devoting their intelligence to research work in agriculture, horticulture and vitamin development, as regards the inculcation of good stuff into the vegetables of this country. I beg the House to give this matter a little consideration. I know that the view is held that when any big institution like this board puts forward a proposal we ought not lightly to stand in its way, but I am not sure that that is always quite the right view especially when we have also to consider the claims of people of virility, vigour, intuition and imagination who are working out for the benefit of the country a definite scheme, agriculturally inclined and horticulturally inclined, which has proved to be of benefit, employs men, and will yield undoubted advantages to the people of this country if it is allowed to continue.

7.53 p.m.

Lieut.-Colonel Sir ARNOLD WILSON: I beg to second the Motion.
There are a few additional facts which would like to submit to the House. The annual turnover of this farm is approximately £30,000. The wages bill for the last ten years has averaged something like £10,000. About 100 men are employed there from one year's end to the other, icluding 14 apprentices who are working for wages and are there because there is no other place in England where they can receive such fine technical training. It is true that if this Instruction were carried and the reservoir were not to he built in that place some time would elapse before a new site could be found, and it might cost more money. But I have no doubt whatever that if those who feel that the employment of labour should have first place—and I am one of those—will balance the prospects of 100 men permanently employed as against temporary employment being found for 200 or 300 men for perhaps two years—and that is just about all that one can expect to employ upon modern works where a vast amount of excavating and other machinery is used—it will be found that there is a very strong case for the selection of an alternative site.
May I turn to an alternative line of thought which I suggest should be of interest to the House? The Minister of Health has, within the last two months, notified his decision to appoint a Water Survey Committee to advise on the progress of measures undertaken for a comprehensive inland water survey. That was on the 7th December. I suggest that pending the result of the labours of that Committee—a very highly qualified Committee—both the House and the Metropolitan Water Board would be very well advised to hold their hand in relation to this scheme. The board have done magnificent work in the past. Their plans were so magnificent that they stood up to the unparalleled drought of the last two years. Surely it is a reasonable risk not to anticipate an equally unparalleled drought during the next 12 months or two years? Royal Commissions have invariably been appointed to consider the problem of London's water supply, which has never been regarded as a local but as a national matter. There have been two Commissions in the last 30 years, the second of which, under Lord Llandaff, reported in 1897 that:
the supply from the Thames should be sufficient in quantity and quality up to 1941.
They added:
It remains for consideration whether it is advisable regularly to deplete the Thames of so large an amount…(300,000,000 gallons)…of water, and whether it would not be well to search for supplies outside the present limits of supply.
I think the time has come for us to go back to the wisdom of our forefathers, who were just as capable of planning as we are now, and to consider whether London should not meet its future needs by the construction of a pipe line from South Wales, which would render these reservoirs unnecessary. The cost was estimated by the Royal Commission at something like £20,000,000, to be spread over 10 years. London is the only great centre of population in England, I believe, which has not found it desirable to draw its water, or a portion of its water, from areas beyond its own locality. The Welsh scheme was very strongly supported in the 'nineties and in the first decade of this century, and were we to undertake it now, with the close co-operation of the Metropolitan Water Board, not only would London get
a sufficient supply for the next century, but it, would be possible to supply a large number of towns and villages between South Wales And London—of course at an additional cost, but much less than the present cost of some of these very elaborate schemes of purification and pumping which are now necessary. Anyone who will take a map and draw a line from South Wales to London will see that it passes through a large number of centres not all of which are well supplied with water.
I do not think I am out of order in suggesting that that scheme put forward by the Royal Commission 30 years ago is beyond practical politics to-day. This is not really a national question. Meanwhile we have to face the problem of today and to-morrow. I am not satisfied from the reports of the Metropolitan Water Board that there is any real urgency for this reservoir. Nothing they said or did during the last 12 months gives me any reason to think that they are really nervous; and, of course, this Bill was drafted before the Minister ever reached a decision to take a broad and comprehensive view of the national water supplies. We hear a good deal of national planning. Those who believe in it should be prepared not merely to pay lip service to it but to request and require the Metropolitan Water Board to come into line with the general scheme for Great Britain as a whole, and to consider dispassionately and deliberately, with the assistance of its own experts and those from elsewhere, whether it should continue indefinitely to rely on the Thames. There are other cities besides London on the Thames. There is the question of sewage disposal, which may or may not become serious. The more water that is pumped out from the river the more has to go back in the form of sewage—after being purified, of course, but never quite the same from the point of view of the fish. This land has been in possession of one man since 1919—a portion only of the land.

Sir WILFRID SUGDEN: My hon. Friend the Member for Chertsey (Sir A. Boyd-Carpenter) who represents the constituency, gave the date as 1909.

Sir A. WILSON: I do not attempt to represent the constituency. I can only
say that, from the information which I have received from one body, that the land has been in the possession of one man since 1919. I did not say which man. A great deal of money has been largely devoted to irrigation with water which is supercharged with oxygen and nitrogenous and mineral salts. The soil has no parallel in England, and it cannot be reproduced in less than four or five years. The Metropolitan Water Board may have to wait for 12 months to get a new site, but the owner of this land will have to wait four or five years. Ten thousand tons of manure have been dug into this land, and that has no parallel anywhere else in England, so far as I know.
There have been widespread protests from persons who are entitled to respect. Eight of the leading horticulturists in England wrote a letter of protest which, so far as I can see, has been completely ignored by the Metropolitan Water Board. I was informed, I think I am permitted to say, that the Royal Society have recently addressed a protest to the Metropolitan Board, and in other directions, in regard to this scheme. The Royal Society have always been regarded as the unofficial adviser of the Government in matters of this sort, and I suggest that their doubts cannot be resolved if this House decides to pass the Bill without the Instruction.
Finally, we have to consider the ultimate effect upon agriculture. Two or three times in the past few years good farmers within a few miles of London and close to the markets have been turned out at a few months' notice in order to make room for development. In no language in the world except English is land which is devoted to agriculture described as sterilised, while land which is devoted to the construction of shacks and bungalows is described as developed. We ought to consider agriculture as one of the major needs in the vicinity of large towns. There is no substitute for really fresh vegetables. I referred to the wages bill as £10,000 a year; that is only the wages paid to the men who are actually working on the land. There is all the transport, and other charges to be reckoned in.
From the point of view of direct labour, this reservoir will deprive the country of the regular subsistence of a, far larger number of men than will be
given employment by its construction. There are other reservoirs, as the hon. and gallant Member for Chertsey (Sir A. Boyd-Carpenter) has said. There are other areas, but more expensive. Surely it is worth while for us to require the Metropolitan Water Board not to consider solely its own interests, to consider, not solely the interests of those who drink water, but of those who eat as well. Man does not live entirely by drinking water, and even if some of us have occasionally to do with our baths only half filled with water, that is better than having our stomachs only half filled with food.

8.6 p.m.

Sir RICHARD MELLER: The appeal which has been made by my hon. and gallant Friends would have a great effect if the House were not to hear the other side of the case. May I clear up one mistake? The hon. and gallant Member for Hitchin (Sir A. Wilson) said that the gentleman for whom he was speaking, the scientist in the agricultural world, had been in possession of this land since 1919. The petition which that gentleman has presented against the Bill stated that he came into possession of a lease for 10 years in September, 1933.

Sir A. WILSON: There was a landlord, who was also an agriculturist, who had the land in his possession, I am informed, since 1919. It has been used solely for the purpose of farming since 1919.

Sir R. MELLER: I am not contradicting that. I am only saying that the petition to the Metropolitan Water Board, on the ground that this farm was one of our great national possessions, stated that the farmer had been in possession of the land since 1932. I am not going to attempt to oppose any of the claims which have been put forward. I am speaking for the Metropolitan Water Board, which is not a commercial undertaking but which is a great body set up by this House to provide, and indeed to safeguard, the requirements from the water point of view of the great population of London and of the very large district outside. The hon. and gallant Member for Hitchin said that we cannot live on water alone. We should be in a very bad way if we had to live lettuces alone. We could neither grow our lettuces nor eat our bread unless we had water.
There has been a shortage of water in this country, and there are still a good many districts which have a shortage of water. The Metropolitan Water Board supplies water to 7,000,000 people, and to the industries which are settled in and around London. Those people are dependent upon the board for the supply coming up to their requirements. There has been an ever increasing demand upon the board for the supply of water. Let hon. Members visualise the burden which has been thrown upon this body by the great development of outer London. People have gone into modern types of houses and have left the crowded centres of London. They have learned to use water in a way they never used it before. The supply to the new houses is greater and the baths are more numerous. The claim per head of the population has, generally speaking, been greater during the past 10 years than it was previously. The annual increase in supplies has gone up by leaps and bounds. In 1925 the increase in supplies was 10,492 annually, but each year the increased supplies have risen. The increase for 1934 was 30,251. The board have so far managed to keep abreast with the demand, but in 1933–1934 the demand solely tried their resources. It is easy to speak now, when the emergency seems to have gone, but hon. Members will remember the view taken by this House, and by the people of London when supplies had to be cut down by the board in order to meet the emergency of last year. I think the House will agree that the greater responsibilities of the board must be met, and in a reasonable way.
The powers sought under the Bill are for an extension of works. I speak as a member of the Metropolitan Water Board who has been through a good many of the discussions which led up to the decision of the board to apply to Parliament for further powers. The decision was not taken in a wanton or light-hearted spirit, or with an utter disregard of those who occupy the land on which the board seek to execute their works. Every consideration has been given to the needs and desires of all interests in and around those particular works.

Sir A. BOYD-CARPENTER: Why was it that the Metropolitan Water Board never exchanged correspondence with the owner of the place? The owner wrote the
1st November to the Metropolitan Water Board the first time he heard that there was any such suggestion. He had a reply on 3rd November, and he replied on 9th November, but he has had no communication from them since

Sir R. MELLER: I am glad my hon. and gallant Friend has raised that. I have seen the correspondence—

Sir A. BOYD-CARPENTER: I have it here—

Sir R. MELLER: And I have a copy of the last letter, which states:
I realise not only that your board has an important duty to fulfil, but also that it is a powerful and wealthy body, whereas I am simply a private individual doing my best to produce fresh fruit and vegetables in the face of fierce foreign competition. Nevertheless my last hope is, and must he, an appeal to Parliament: much as I deplore having to oppose your board's wishes as also the expenditure incident to a Petition against your Bill which, to me, will mean a good deal.
The board in their letter of 3rd November had set out three reasons for the line which they were going to take, and expressed
regret that in all the circumstances it is not practicable for the matter to be reconsidered.
The board could only have replied to the letter of 9th November by way of acknowledgment.

Sir A. WILSON: rose—

Sir SAMUEL CHAPMAN: What have you to do with it?

Sir A. WILSON: The first intimation he had of it was through an incursion of Metropolitan Water Board employés on his land, who told his employés they would soon have to get out, as something was going to be done there.

Sir R. MELLER: Those are ex parte statements. Let these matters go before the Committee upstairs who can go thoroughly into them. They ought to be thoroughly tested by the Committee, under the procedure which has been settled by this House in order that all matters may be gone into fully and carefully. It is no good bringing statements forward in this way in order to prejudice matters. The board have been set up by Statute in the best interests of the people for whom they operate, and very full,
proper and careful consideration has been given to all the circumstances of this case.

Sir A. BOYD-CARPENTER: And two months' notice.

Sir R. MELLER: There is no two months' notice yet. I have not heard of it, and I know of no evidence that has been produced to the board on that. The board have sought the best advice they can with reference to this scheme. They are prepared to produce their technical and other advice. I have no doubt that the petitioners against the Bill will be prepared to produce their 'evidence and have it tested by examination and cross-examination. This is not the place where we can go into the merits or demerits of the petition put forward. There is another place where the merits of the Bill and the merits of any application against the Bill can be properly heard.
The hon. and gallant Member for Hitchin addressed a letter to-day to the "Times" in reply to a letter which had been put in by the chairman of the board. I do not think he wants to mislead the House, but he has not made a full note of the report of the Llandaff Committee. Perhaps he is not aware of the provisions of the paragraphs to which he referred in his letter. My hon. Friend's first quotation, from paragraph 123 of the report, is based on the assumption that the population of "Water London" will be 12,000,000 in 1941, whereas up to this year, 1935, it is only 7,250,000; and from the information which we have obtained and the calculations that have been made, it would seem we shall not reach in 1941 anything like the population figure suggested by the Llandaff Commission.

Sir A. WILSON: The per capita consumption has doubled.

Sir R. MELLER: As I have said, we have taught people to use water. The position arrived at is based entirely on the assumption that the population of "Water London" would continue to increase at the same rate.
My hon. Friend, in his second quotation, introduces the figure of 300,000,000 gallons, but as a matter of fact the commission were considering, not the figure of 300,000,000 gallons which he has interpolated into his extract from paragraph 131 of the commission's report, but
400,000,000 gallons. That figure does not appear in the paragraph. It says:
It remains for consideration whether it is advisable regularly to deplete the Thames of so large an amount of its total flow, or whether, in view of the constantly increasing population, which would render even this additional 100,000,000 gallons shortly again inadequate, it would not be more prudent to seek for supplies outside the present limits of supply.
As a matter of fact, the commission were considering 400,000,000, and not 300,000,000, gallons. Therefore, I would beg my hon. and gallant Friend not to be misled, and not to put forward points which are likely to mislead the House. With regard to the suggestion made by my hon. and gallant Friend in his letter, that this matter should be referred to the committee which has been set up recently by the Minister of Health, that suggestion, no doubt, will be dealt with by the Minister himself.
I do not want to prolong this discussion. I hope that the House has fully made up its mind as to the necessity of the board's obtaining further supplies of water in order to meet the demands upon it. The other question is as to whether the board are right—whether their information is right, and whether they have been rightly guided by the experts who have advised them. I do not wish to say a single word against the work which has been done by Mr. Secrett with regard to agricultural development and scientific research. We want it; we want to get all the work we can for the agricultural workers of this country; and I should never stand up and say that the board would endeavour to kill that industry and research merely for the sake of not themselves making proper research and inquiry with regard to their scheme. I believe that the board have made full inquiry. They will be able to produce their evidence, and those who are opposing the Bill will produce theirs. I am satisfied that, after a right and careful and proper inquiry, the Committee must come down on the side of the Metropolitan Water Board.

Mr. HANNON: May I point out that my hon. Friend has not stated to the House why this particular site has been selected by the Metropolitan Water Board as against some other possible alternative site which would avoid the difficulties with which we are now confronted?

Sir R. MELLER: This site is the site above all others which is desirable and necessary for the development of the Metropolitan Water Board's scheme. Other sites have been considered, but there is no other site which is so appropriate and which can be carried on at such little cost to the community. Further, in no part of the river are we better placed for obtaining our supplies of water than at this proposed site.

Mr. HANNON: Is it the considered opinion of the Metropolitan Water Board that there is no other site which is adequate except this particular one? Is not that my hon. Friend's allegation?

Sir R. MELLER: My allegation is that there is no other site in the Valley of the Thames that is so suitable as this for the supply of water for London.

8.21 p.m.

Mr. MAITLAND: This House is always interested in a Private Bill, and I think my hon. Friends who have moved this Instruction have done so with a consideration which we must appreciate. But we already see indications of difference between those who are proposing this Instruction, and my hon. Friend who speaks with knowledge as a member of the Metropolitan Water Board, and it seems to me that we have had sufficient evidence even thus far to show that this is a matter which the House itself could not be expected to settle in a satisfactory way. In the first place, if the Motion of my two hon. Friends were carried, the effect would be that the Committee set up to deal with the Bill would have no opportunity of investigating the matter at all. Is that the right way to deal with a matter of this kind? I have had some little experience both of sponsoring Bills and of being interested in the opposition to Private Bills, and I have always found that every Private Bill Committee of this House has acted with the utmost fairness and impartiality. I express no view whatever either on the points which have been raised by those who have moved the Motion or by my hon. Friend who speaks for the board, but I think that the question which has been raised is essentially one which would be best considered by a Private Bill Committee.
It would be a mistake on the part of the House to deprecate the ability of its own committees to settle these matters
properly. There is no body that is likely to deal more fairly with any such matter than a Private Bill Committee of the House. No one in the House will desire that any injustice should be done to any individual, but, on the other hand, no one would like to be a party to preventing such an important institution as the Metropolitan Water Board from carrying out its important public duties. That is a matter for evidence and investigation. Some of the remarks which have been made with regard to the details of the scheme obviously raise matters upon which there is difference of opinion, and it would be a great pity if, on the ground of some suggestion that there had been some little discourtesy, there were, I would not like to say prejudice, because that would itself be a prejudicial expression, but any idea that the House should think that this great authority was attempting to make an undue use of its powers.
I was very much impressed when my hon. Friend the Member for Chertsey (Sir A. Boyd-Carpenter) mentioned this matter to me in conversation, representing, as I do, an agricultural constituency and being very keenly interested in agriculture. I made it my business to try to find out what I could with regard to the other side, and I have gathered sufficient information to convince me that this is a matter which ought to be placed before a Private Bill Committee. The subject of employment has been mentioned, and that is a matter which we are all very anxious to safeguard, but I am sure it will be agreed that the development of this scheme will take a long time, and, if it is going to be delayed while other schemes have to be prepared, there will necessarily be delay in embarking upon the construction of these reservoirs, wherever it is decided that they shall be put. Is not this question of delay worth considering on the ground of employment? I think it more than offsets the suggestion of my hon. Friend. He has mentioned the fact of 100 people being employed, but, from what I have learned of the proposed undertaking, it will mean the employment of hundreds of men for a very considerable period on the constructional work.

Sir R. MELLER: Five hundred men for five years.

Mr. MAITLAND: I am glad that that information has been given to the House. The House will take what certainly seems to me to be a wise course in submitting this to a Private Bill Committee and not deprive them of any opportunity whatever of considering the evidence submitted to them on this point.

8.25 p.m.

Mr. CHORLTON: I join in this Debate to inquire why the reservoir is to be here rather than to consider the hardships that this research farm is suffering, although that question does interest me as I have tried to overcome the difficulties of our climate and temperature by laying pipes in the soil. I am disappointed that my hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham (Sir R. Meller) has really not explained in any degree why it is proposed to put the reservoir at Walton. Why should it be in this place? Are there no alternatives After all, the main consideration is a clay bottom to prevent leakage, but I gather that, apart from that, cost has been almost the only consideration which has guided the Water Board, because it is near a pumping station and near an intake from the Thames. Those are right and proper things to consider but is it right to look at the thing from such a short angle as the immediate first cost in this way when you have to consider this capital city of the Empire and its expansion in the years to come from a very different angle, as many of us do?
Reference has been made to consumption, and to the number of inhabitants of the district. It has been said that the increase is not as great as was anticipated by the Llandaff Commission. That is rather remarkable, because we are all aware that of late this increase has been maintained not only on the population side but also on the industry side. Estimating the consumption at 80 gallons a head, which is not my own figure but one given in a paper the other day, I compute that we shall require four times as much water for this district as we take at present.

Sir R. MELLER: The consumption today is 40 gallons per head, practically the same amount as when the Llandaff Commission sat in 1911.

Mr. CHORLTON: I am well aware of that fact. I have also all the figures for almost all the towns in the country. I
am not putting my own figure forward but am accepting the figure of someone who has surveyed the situation and taken the general increase that is liable to come from the increase of different types of houses and all other considerations. He has taken 80 gallons. With a figure of nearly four times the amount that is taken to-day, it is surely rather short-sighted to lay your plans upon a, reservoir, or a couple of reservoirs, in the way this scheme proposes. I feel that, while they are no doubt escaping from the dilemma set up by the late drought and while it will keep them clear for some years, it is hardly the policy that you would except from the biggest water company in the country, one of the biggest in the world, with all the experience of other undertakings before them. So far as I know, the comparable case of water taken from a long distance is Los Angeles, where about 300,000,000 gallons a day are taken from 230 miles distant.

Mr. DEPUTY - SPEAKER (Captain Bourne): I must remind the hon. Member that we are not now discussing the Second Reading but an Instruction.

Mr. CHORLTON: I was only trying to illustrate what arises out of the change in venue proposed by this Instruction to strike out the reservoir. I only meant to indicate that the alternative scheme, which is not a scheme which I am proposing myself but one that 'has been brought up on more than one occasion and has been considered by the board, is to bring water from Wales. The scheme has been gone into in detail and it has been shown that the water required to be brought from Wales—

Mr. DEPUTY-SPEAKER: I must rule that out of order. If the Instruction were carried, it would not and could not affect any such scheme.

Mr. CHORLTON: Then I must turn to another angle, which is why the reservoir should be in this particular place. I expected to bear more detailed information about that. If it had been said that the ground was sandy or that the second reservoir was at Staines where the ground was suitable, one could understand it. If it had been said that North London, which takes a very big supply, has already one big reservoir in the Lea Valley, that would have helped
us. The difficulty is that the limitation to the consideration of this site has not allowed those concerned with the farm to understand why it is so desired, and that is why I have risen and why I was disappointed my hon. Friend did not give further explanation as to what is proposed. I should like to confirm what has been said by my hon. Friends about this farm. If it be as good as it is made out to be, it is not the issue of 100 men working there and the wages paid them, it is the issue of creating a far bigger industry to do away with the importation of vegetables. We have tried in the North to do this very same thing. I tried myself to the extent of being part of a company that we tried to get up for the purpose of overcoming climatic difficulties and growing vegetables. We depend upon the research work of a farm like this, and, if you are going to shut this down, inevitably four or five years will be lost. On the other hand, looking at it purely from an engineering point of view, if my hon. Friend had assured us quite definitely that there was no other suitable position in the Thames Valley for a reservoir, one would have been able to gay that there is absolutely no alternative.

8.34 p.m.

Lieut.-Colonel LLEWELLIN: It seems to me that the greater part of my hon. Friend's speech has been an argument for sending the whole of this matter to a Committee upstairs. It is clear that this is not the place in which we can go into technical details. It is surely a matter for technical experts appearing before a Committee of the House and being cross-examined by people who are properly instructed for the other side.

Mr. CHORLTON: The great difficulty arising out of this matter is the cost. Those who are against it are not able to put up the case which the water board can do.

Lieut.-Colonel LLEWELLIN: We must approach this matter really from this point of view. This House has set up a great institution in the Metropolitan Water Board, which is responsible for supplying some 560 square miles of the most thickly populated area in the whole world, and some 7,250,000 people. We all had a certain amount of misgiving during the second dry summer. It was a ques
tion whether the water supply of London would hold out during that summer or not. In fact, it did. We are short-lived both in our political memories and in other memories in this country. but surely our memory is not so short-lived as to forget entirely that we had grave misgivings during the months of last summer as to whether the water supply of this great area would hold out or not, and we had, of course, to place restrictions on the supplies of a large number of people. Now this board is coming to the House and putting up a scheme for two large reservoirs. The effect of carrying the Instruction would be to cut away one-half of the Bill. It would leave it with only half its value as a supply proposition for the Metropolis.
Are we going to do that after just hearing in this House ex parte statements on one side or the other, or are we going to send the matter to a Committee upstairs? That is the whole and sole point that this House has to decide when it votes, if it does vote, on this Instruction to-night. There is not one of us who would like to see a man, apparently like Mr. Secrett, dispossessed of a farm of which he has made full use. After all, the Metropolitan Water Board will have to pay him full compensation for all these miles of pipes, and probably 10,000 tons of manure as well, and rightly so. But when we are informed that this is the best place in the opinion of the board, I do not think any of us can say that this big public body has just said, "Here is a good agricultural farm; we will take it." They have, obviously, gone into this matter from the point of view of knowing where best to get their supplies of water. This farm happens to be near their main intake. This new reservoir therefore happens to be an extension of the existing works, and from this point of view it is really the right place in which to put the reservoir, if indeed no better place can be found. But the people to decide whether another and a better place can be found are a trusted Committee of this House, after hearing the evidence on each side, and I have not the slightest doubt that Mr. Secrett, who has been able to organise considerable opposition in this House, will be able to put up quite as good a show before the Committee to
whom, I hope, the House will allow the whole of the Bill to go.

8.40 p.m.

Mr. GARDNER: I cannot claim to speak as an agriculturist, but I can claim to say something as a member of the Metropolitan Water Board. The Water Board does not wish in any way to belittle the work which is being done on these two farms. We appreciate what is being done, but we are in the position in which we cannot help ourselves. The petitioner asks that the whole question shall be put to the strongest possible proof. We welcome that, and, as the hon. and gallant Member for Uxbridge (Lieut.-Colonel Llewellin) has just said, we ask that the Bill shall be sent to a Committee of Members of this House and for the hearing of the evidence of experts of all kinds. The hon. Member for Platting (Mr. Chorlton) wants to know why we want the reservoir where we propose to put it. The board bring this site to Parliament because they must. It has to be remembered that the board are not a private but a public corporation spending public money and bound to bring the cheapest and best proposition to Parliament, otherwise we would be failing in our duty. Therefore we bring this demand along. The hon. Member for Platting suggested that it would take four or five years to get a new start with this farm, but I would remind him that Holly Lodge and Crown Farm were set down in two years and some months, so that it will not be such a long job to get restarted if the proposition in the Bill is carried by this House.
Another reason for coming forward with this suggestion is that the Water Board already, as successors of the old Chelsea Water Company, have part of the site on a very long lease and are therefore already in possession of it. There are other factors. Proximity to the existing intake has been mentioned and proximity to existing mains. These things are of importance because the water which London has is river water, and storage is part of the purification process. That is one of the factors which determined Parliament in deciding that the Metropolitan Water Board should not go to Wales. That proposition has been put to Parliament and rejected. If I am informed correctly, the London County Council have tried again and again to get
powers for a scheme to draw water from Wales. I know that it is wrong to discuss that matter, but I should like to say, speaking with information that was not available then, that a water supply from Wales would be a very dangerous thing in certain eventualities. A pipe line from Wales could be blown up.

Mr. DEPUTY-SPEAKER: The hon. Member is now getting out of order.

Mr. GARDNER: I am sorry. Storage is part of our purification process. It was proved by the late Sir Alexander Houston, who died last year, by experiments on his own body, that river water, impregnated as it is sometimes with the typhoid germ, can be purified, as far as that part of the bacteria content was concerned, by storage. He discovered this fact by research. He experimented upon himself a number of times before he announced the discovery, and it was that fact which decided Parliament to allow the water supply of London to be drawn from the Thames. Therefore, if it is part of the purification, it is necessary to have it near the intake and the plant that deals with purification, so that the process may be as cheap as it is possible to make it. The need for further storage has been admitted. The Second Reading of the Bill has been passed formally, and I ask the House to send the Bill upstairs to Committee for the consideration that it ought to have. It is no use to suggest that the Metropolitan Water Board can wander about looking for sites for reservoirs. The area is strictly limited. It is strictly limited by the geological fact that is known as the London clay. There, the engineer can build and get his reservoir much more cheaply than by going somewhere else. For these reasons I ask the House to give the Bill, un-mutilated, a chance to go to Committee upstairs.

8.96 p.m.

Major COLFOX: I oppose the Bill as an unprejudiced observer, who knows nothing at first hand about the district. I came here to-night hoping to hear some arguments from the supporters of the Bill why it was necessary to take this farm land for the purpose of the reservoir. Except for the fact that the land appears to be near another reservoir and near the intake of the river, we have had absolutely no arguments from any of the three
hon. Members who have spoken in support of the Bill why this particular piece of land should be chosen. I cannot hope to compete with the forensic skill of my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Uxbridge (Lieut.-Colonel Llewellin). He made out, from his point of view, the advocate's case, if I may say so without offence, for sending the Bill upstairs to be considered by a Committee which can take evidence and cross-examine witnesses. That would be all very well if the contesting parties were on an equality.
In this case you have a powerful and wealthy corporation, who are determined to get their own way, and who have the power of forcing their opinions through, while on the other side you have a private individual, who has devoted his life to agricultural and horticultural pursuits. No doubt he is very skilled in his own line of business but he has neither the money nor the skill to prosecute a case before a Committee of Parliament. Therefore, we have very unmatched opponents. My hon. and gallant Friend asked that the Bill should be sent upstairs, but I submit that the fact that the two antagonists are so ill-matched makes this procedure extremely unfair. Therefore, this point of principle ought to be argued and decided here and now on the Floor of the House. The promoters of the Bill have known all along that this was the case they had to meet, and yet they have come here totally unprepared with any arguments to meet the case that has been put against them. In my submission, they have entirely failed to make out their claim to have this Bill sent upstairs to a Committee, and for that reason I very strongly support the Instruction.

8.49 p.m.

Dr. O'DONOVAN: It is, perhaps, to a London Member, a little distressful to hear the Metropolitan Water Board referred to in this House as "a powerful and wealthy corporation, determined to get its own way." If that allegation were made out, there would be every reason to vote for the Instruction to the Committee, but I suggest that the House would be very ill-advised to take up that attitude of criticism and judgment upon the Metropolitan Water Board, which has served London so well. The board has brought Londoners up on Thames and Lee water, and the purification of this river water has been a lifetime study
for the skilled officers of the board. With the skill that they have acquired in the study of the problem they have preserved millions of Londoners from epidemics. The suggestion that the board's officers should be cut off from utilising a supply of river water whose management and purification they understand so well, and should by Instruction be told to look elsewhere, is a menace to the health of Londoners, which responsibility the competent officers of the board would not like to take over. The board has made London possible for the teeming provincials who crowd into it for their livelihood and their careers. An overcrowded London would not be tolerable in its present state of housing but for the way in which the board year after year has supplied it with ample quantities of pure water. The board has never yet, to the knowledge of London Members, misplaced the trust that we have in it, and I ask the House to say that the board should not have a public rebuff, while it is preserving the amenities and the health of the London which it has served so well.

8.51 p.m.

Sir GEORGE HUME: It is extremely important that the House should realise how serious the question is. In the speeches which have been made there has been a suggestion that there is no real excuse for coming forward with a scheme of this sort. As a Member of the Thames Conservancy, I can say that our officers have been regarding the situation of the Thames with very great anxiety for a long period. We have had two years of drought, and the water levels in the Thames basin have gone down, I think, something like 40 feet. Many tributaries of the Thames have dried up at their sources. It is true that we have had some rains lately, but they have not had the effect which might have been desired, and the result is that it is absolutely essential that further water resources should be provided. If we are to have another series of dry years, the outlook will be serious indeed. I had not intended to speak to-day, but in view of the fact that the danger that is being run is a very real one, and as no one has brought out that fact, I have thought it necessary to do so. Nobody regrets more than I that any land should be
taken which may be vital in other directions, but in view of the general situation the House will be taking a great responsibility if they do not allow this problem to go before the Committee, to be thoroughly thrashed out. I hope, therefore, that the Instruction will not be agreed to.

8.53 p.m.

Mr. LEVY: It ill becomes me to oppose any movement for a greater supply of water for London or elsewhere, in view of the fact that for a long time I have been advocating not only an extra supply of water but a national scheme of water. In these circumstances, however, we find that the Metropolitan Water Board, for the purpose of building their reservoir, are acquiring land which is essential for research in agriculture. There is no reason whatever, as far as I can see, why their reservoir should not be built on some other site. The reservoir that they are proposing to build is one which they suggest will provide London with water, but that is an illusion, seeing that they will, before very long, have to go to Wales for their water. Therefore, I am opposing the Bill, because I consider that they are not doing the right thing by acquiring this particular land which is so essential to the agricultural industry from the research point of view, which the whole of this House is so anxious to revive. The Bill should be turned down by this House and the Metropolitan Water Board asked to pick another site so as not to interfere with land which is essential to agricultural research. That is my only reason for opposing the Bill. In the present state of agriculture we must conserve, as far as possible, all farms which are doing research work so essential for a revival of agriculture. I am not opposing the Bill because I want to deprive London of any reserve of water, but I have not heard any argument which has proved that it is impossible to find other land upon which to build the reservoir.

8.57 p.m.

The MINISTER of HEALTH (Sir Hilton Young): The House has listened with the greatest attention and interest to a closely reasoned and most temperate Debate, which has been remarkable for the even balance of opinion on both sides. I have lost count of the exact number of speeches for and against the Motion. These circumstances are rather unusual on
a Private Bill when we are more accustomed to all the speeches being on one side. The Minister of Health in addressing the House on such an occasion as this does not, save in the most exceptional circumstances, consider that it is his duty to argue for or against the Motion. There may be circumstances in which it would be his duty to maintain one side as against another, but I am sure hon. Members will agree that this is not such an occasion. The function of the Minister of Health is to do his best to assist the House to come to a conclusion and form a free judgment on the question.
The position to-night is that if we pass the Instruction it rules out from the consideration of a Committee of this House the proposals of the Metropolitan Water Board with regard to a water reservoir at Walton, which, as has been rightly said, is half the substance of the Bill. If, on the other hand, we do not pass the Instruction, it is clear that we are not thereby coming to a final conclusion on the matter. All we are saying is that this Bill should follow the ordinary procedure of the House and go to a Committee, who can deal fully and adequately with questions of this sort. What is the frame of mind in which hon. Members find themselves on this Bill? I think hon. Members may find themselves in the position of saying that as it is an issue involving a matter, of public moment, so great and vital, that the House ought not to come to a swift decision and remove it from the consideration of their own Committee.
What is the nature of the issue? It is not my intention, and I do not feel competent, to take a part in the arguments before the House, but it appears to be a case in which both interests are public interests. The case put before us on behalf of the Metropolitan Water Board, by the hon. Member for Mitcham (Sir R. Meller) and hon. Members who have supported the Bill, is that it is a matter involving the strongest and highest public interests, but, on the other hand, the case put before us by the hon. Member for Chertsey (Sir A. Boyd-Carpenter) and those who support him, is that there are also strong public interests on the other side as well. As to the nature of the interests involved in the case of the Metropolitan Water Board I will not state them in my own words but invite
hon. Members to look at the manner in which they have been set out by the Metropolitan Water Board. I have before me a statement of the Metropolitan Water Board, and when I try to form a judgment as to the nature of the issues involved my attention is attracted by the following passage:
The proposed sites are not only the most suitable but also, in the case of reservoir No. 1 at Walton, the only practical one for the purpose in view.
That is an opinion which deserves the consideration of the House in arriving at a judgment. What is the purpose in view? I am sure the House will recognise the magnitude of the issues involved. On the second page of their statement they say:
The urgent necessity for additional storage accommodation to meet the growing needs of London and adjoining districts cannot be disputed.
It is not disputed by anyone, and such necessity has been emphasised in my experience at the Ministry of Health during the recent prolonged drought. I can confirm that statement from my own knowledge, because I remember during last summer being applied to by the Metropolitan Water Board to issue emergency orders. The next statement is one which I think sums up the great importance of the issues involved:
The board feel impelled by a sense of their public duty and responsibility for the supply of water to state unequivocally that the powers sought by the Bill are essential for ensuring an adequate supply, and that if these powers be not granted the supply will be seriously imperilled in the event of a period of severe drought.
The observation which must arise upon that is that the House has entrusted the vital responsibility for the supply of water to the people of London to the board, and when the body to which this important task has been entrusted says that such and such a measure is essential for securing an adequate supply, the House will certainly be inclined to think that that statement requires most careful investigation and consideration. I am sure we shall all do well to think once and twice before deciding whether it is safe or wise to judge the matter without giving it that full consideration.
Let me turn to the case as put before us by my hon. Friend the Member for Chertsey. There, again, I am sure that the House will find matter for serious interest. My hon. Friend dwelt upon the
question of food supply. No consideration that raises that point can be lightly dismissed. He dwelt upon the national need for employment. Again, however small the case might be, that is an argument which the House will not lightly turn aside. There was a third point to which the House will attach even greater importance, and that is the extreme importance of doing nothing to discourage successful efforts in the way of agricultural research. I must not presume to have any acquaintance with the technicalities of that matter, but I feel the strongest sympathy with the argument that we cannot spare any profitable and useful work that can be done in the direction of such research.
The position then emerges from the discussion that we have here these great and serious public interests on the one hand, and on the other hand we have to consider the material, relevant and weighty matters advanced in the case put before us. If the House came to the conclusion that matters so serious should be judged with the most, I will not say elaborate, but the most searching procedure which this House has instituted, would not that indeed be a sound conclusion? There is one matter on which I must say a special word. My hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin (Sir A. Wilson) argued that this matter ought not to be decided until a report has been received from the Inland Water Survey Committee which was recently established by me for the purpose of water research. It is most natural, since that committee is only a recent institution, that there should be some misunderstanding, but I should make it clear that it would be altogether a. misapprehension to think that such a matter as that which we are now considering would come under the consideration of the Survey Committee. That committee has been established for the purpose of a statistical research into the water resources of the country, and it would be quite outside its terms of reference for it to take into consideration specific schemes of water supply.
One last word upon this bearing of the case. The House might very naturally be inclined to say that the Minister of Health has a special interest in water supply, that he is likely to have water on the brain in these days, that he is likely to take a more favourable view
of water supply than of any contrary interest, and that he should co-ordinate water supply with the other interests of the nation. I thought it right on this matter to consult with my right hon. Friend the Minister of Agriculture, who is acquainted with aspects of which I cannot have knowledge. The result of that consultation is that the Minister has asked me to inform the House of his opinion on the matter. He is very much concerned with the interests of such institutions as the farm in question, with all its importance to agricultural research, but he agrees that the appropriate and most thorough way for considering these interests and their coordination with the public interest of water supply would be by reference of this matter to a Committee of the House.
The House will be grateful to my hon. Friends the Members for Chertsey and Mitcham for having called attention to aspects of the matter which, in the opinion of all of us, deserve the most careful consideration, but my own conclusion in this Debate is that all these things can most properly be considered by a Committee of the House. In that event my hon. Friends will be able to congratulate themselves that by their action they have done what is necessary to secure attention to the interests concerned.

Major COLFOX: Is my right hon. Friend quite certain that giving a Second Reading to this Bill and defeating the Instruction leaves it open to the Committee upstairs to review the matter of principle that has been raised? Is it not more probable that the Committee upstairs may assume that the passing of the Second Reading and the withdrawal or rejection of the Instruction is approval of the principle to which we are objecting? Is it not also a fact that this is the last occasion on which the point of principle can be decided?

Sir JOSEPH LAMB: Would the Minister say whether the passing of the Second Reading now would not practically be agreement to the particular site to which we object? That is very important. It has been said by some speakers in the Debate that we who oppose the Second Reading of the Bill are opposed to water supply or are questioning the necessity for water supply.
We are doing nothing of the sort. It is not at all a question of the supply of water, but a question as to the site of the reservoir for the storage of water. We want to be sure that if the Second Reading of the Bill is passed now we shall still have the power in Committee to ensure that full inquiry is made into the question whether there is any alternative site available.

Sir H. YOUNG: My hon. Friends will understand that I have no authority to speak for the Committee upstairs, and I can only express my opinion as to the procedure likely to be adopted. I have tried to explain that if we pass the Instruction to-day we do decide the matter against the Water Board, but if we do not pass the Instruction we leave the matter open to the Committee upstairs to come to any decision it thinks advisable en all the matters that have been discussed to-day.

9.14 p.m.

Mr. CHARLES WILLIAMS: After the very eloquent appeal of the Minister, that we should send the Bill upstairs to the Committee appointed by the House, a committee of experts who will hear evidence, I feel that that is probably the best method of dealing with the matter. As, possibly, the only Member of this House who spends a considerable amount of time in dealing with horticulture and horticultural exhibitions, I wish to put a point of view which has not yet been expressed in this Debate. We have been told by various hon. Members that the proper thing for us to do is to send this Bill up to the Committee. Now I am not saying anything whatever against the Metropolitan Water Board, but we all know that when there are very difficult legal questions involved in a Bill which is going before a Committee of this House and when, on the one side, there is a private individual and on the other side a great body like the Metropolitan Water Board, the individual is brought under a pressure which is very hard indeed. I do not think that the House is wasting time in taking a couple of hours to deal with the case of the private individual as against the big company in this particular instance.
As far as I know there is not one of those who have put their names down to the Motion who does not wish to see the most plentiful and most perfect supply
of water possible made available for London. On the other hand, we are not satisfied with the position as we have heard it explained in this case. The hon. Member for Mitcham (Sir R. Meller) presented his case with that clearness and fullness which we expect from his legal training and knowledge but I wonder why he never told us when these works are to begin. Is it to be in one year or in five years? We are told that this would mean work for 400 or 500 men for several years but when are they going to get the work I In the meanwhile I would remind hon. Members that you have hundreds working there at present in what is one of the greatest institutions of its kind in this country. Why should we hold up the development of a place of that kind?
A slight mistake has occurred due perhaps to the enthusiasm of my hon. Friend who opened the Debate which I would like to correct. Reference was made to the ownership from 1909 to 1919. The present owner began in 1932, and actually this was market garden land from 1919. The district was gradually being built up and he took it on because it had advantages as regards soil and in other respects which enabled him to use it in this way. Not only have those who are supporting the Bill not told the House when they are going to begin; not only have they failed to explain what steps they have taken to find some other place for this purpose, but they have said, "These are not matters for the House at all, but for the Committee upstairs." Well, I am prepared to leave it to the Committee but when it goes to the Committee certain facts which have not been dealt with fully here will, I am sure, be considered in detail. Such questions as when the work is to commence, and whether it is really urgent or not will, I am sure, be gone into by the Committee.
I feel certain that if there had been a factory involved employing the same number of men there would never have been any question of bringing a Bill such as this before the House. But because it is something which is attached to agriculture, the poor Cinderella among industries, all these considerations are to be put on one side. I think the Committee upstairs will probably go into the matter also from that point of view. We ought to realise the actual position here. We
are not proposing to take over an ordinary market garden, or an ordinary centre of intensive cultivation. We are dealing with an exceptional place which produces the highest standard of vegetables and the highest ratio to the acre known here. This is a centre which is turning out men and women who are qualified to act as instructors and managers all over the country. We hear a lot about bringing people back to the land. The work which is being done here is not only that of bringing people back to the land but of providing trainers and instructors for those who go back to the land.
I spend a considerable amount of time in judging at the Royal Horticultural Shows and at other shows, and the produce of this farm has won as many as seven, eight or nine out of 10 first prizes for vegetables during the last few years. We have something here which is above the average. I come from the West Country and I might be prejudiced against this farm. But as one who takes a keen interest in the production and marketing of vegetables in this country I realise its importance to the whole industry. We should hesitate before agreeing to a Measure which would take away from us this remarkable farm to which so much brains and ability have been devoted. Even to interfere with its development is almost as bad as taking it away altogether. If we do so, we shall be doing something which will affect not only that one district and those men immediately concerned, but the whole horticultural industry. It will take away the example on which we are building throughout the country. As one who has a close connection with the industry, I do not want our best example to be destroyed. I would say to my hon. Friends here that I think we might withdraw the Motion. It should be realised by now that when anything exceptional is involved in a case like this the House of Commons realises that the strongest possible appeal should be made for the individual as against any board, however powerful, and my concluding words would be that we do not wish to stand in any way against the development of the water supplies of this country.

Sir A. BOYD-CARPENTER: I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Motion.

Motion, by leave, withdrawn.

Orders of the Day — POST OFFICE (AMENDMENT) [MONEY].

Resolution reported,
That, for the purposes of any Act of the present Session to amend the Post Office Act, 1908, and other enactments relating to the Post Office, it is expedient to authorise the payment out of moneys provided by Parliament of gratuities to owners of vessels or owners or persons in charge of aircraft in respect of postal packets conveyed by them on behalf of the Post Office, and to pilots, crew and others in respect of postal packets brought by them to any Post Office from any vessels or aircraft.

Orders of the Day — POST OFFICE AND TELEGRAPH [MONEY].

Resolution reported,
That it is expedient—

(i) to authorise the payment out of the Consolidated Fund of such sums, not exceeding in the whole thirty-four million pounds, as may be required for the further development of the postal, telegraphic and telephonic systems;
(ii) to authorise the Treasury to borrow, by means of terminable annuities or by the issue of Exchequer bonds, for the purpose of providing money for sums so authorised to be issued or of repaying to the Consolidated Fund all or any part of the sums so issued;
(iii) to provide for the payment of such terminable annuities, or of the principal of and interest on any such Exchequer bonds, out of moneys provided by Parliament for the service of the Post Office or, if those moneys are insufficient, out of the Consolidated Fund."

Bill ordered to be brought in upon the said Resolution by Sir Kingsley Wood, Mr. Duff Cooper and Sir Ernest Bennett.

Orders of the Day — POST OFFICE AND TELEGRAPH (MONEY) BILL,

"to provide for raising further money for the development of the postal, telegraphic, and telephonic systems"; presented accordingly, and read the First time; to be read a Second time upon Friday; and to be printed. [Bill 31.]

Orders of the Day — SUPERANNUATION [MONEY].

Resolution reported,
That it is expedient—

(1) to amend the Superannuation Acts, 1834 to 1919, and to make provision out of
moneys to he provided by Parliament in respect of—

(a) the application of the Superannuation Act, 1909, to female civil servants;
(b) pensions to spouses or dependants of civil servants in return for the surrender by such civil servants of part of certain annual superannuation allowances;
(c) the reckoning of service in an un-established capacity;
(d) the alteration in certain eases of the amount of salary and emoluments upon which superannuation payments in respect of service in the Civil Service are to be computed, and of the scale on which additional allowances under Section one of the Superannuation Act, 1909, are to he computed;
(e) the abolition of certain statutory restrictions on granting superannuation allowances at the full rate to civil servants;
(f) the reduction to fifty-five years of the age on retirement at which without a medical certificate superannuation allowances may be granted to a certain class of civil servants who have been members of His Majesty's consular service in China;
(g) further superannuation payments to or in respect of persons transferred from the Civil Service to approved employment within the meaning of Section four of the Superannuation Act, 1914;
(h) superannuation payments in respect of service in the Civil Service to persons who, having been civil servants, retire from the service of certain local authorities; and superannuation payments in respect of service in the Civil Service to or in respect of persons who, having been in the service of certain local authorities, retire from or die while in the Civil Service;
(i) the application of the Superannuation (Prison Officers) Act, 1919, to certain officers employed in institutions maintained by the Board of Control;
(j) any amendment of Section one of the Superannuation Act, 1887;
(k) the increase of certain allowances and gratuities which have been or may hereafter be granted by the Treasury to or in respect of persons who have been employed in the Civil Service in so far as such allowances and gratuities have been or may be calculated by reference to any bonus paid under a scheme approved by, or otherwise under the authority of, the Treasury;
(l) any consequential amendment of certain enactments in so far as they refer to the Superannuation Acts, 1834 to 1919, or to enactments contained in those Acts; and
(m) the modification or revocation of the rules made under Section six of the
146
Superannuation Act, 1887, as modified under any subsequent Act;

(2) to provide for entitling or qualifying persons who, having been in the employment of certain local authorities, retire from the Civil Service, to receive from such local authorities certain payments in respect of that employment, and for modifying in connection therewith enactments and schemes relating to the superannuation of officers and servants of local authorities; and

(3) to provide for other matters connected with the matters aforesaid."

Bill ordered to be brought in upon the said Resolution by the Chancellor of the Exchequer and Mr. Duff Cooper.

Orders of the Day — SUPERANNUATION BILL,

"to amend the law with respect to the superannuation benefits of persons who have served in the permanent Civil Service of the State; to provide for the amendment of Section 1 of the Superannuation Act, 1887, and for the modification or revocation of the Rules made under Section 6 of that Act, and for purposes connected with the matters aforesaid"; presented accordingly and read the First time; to be read a Second time upon Wednesday, and to be printed. [Bill 32.]

Orders of the Day — GOVERNMENT OF INDIA BILL (PROCEEDINGS ON COMMITTEE STAGE).

9.31 p.m.

The PRIME MINISTER (Mr. Ramsay MacDonald): I beg to move:
That the following provisions shall have effect with respect to the Committee stage of the Government of India Bill:

(i) If the Chairman is satisfied with respect to a series of Clauses that no Member desires to move any Amendment to any of those Clauses or to move the postponement or omission of any of them, he shall put the question that those Clauses stand part of the Bill without putting the question separately as respects each. Clause; and
(ii) Any Private Business which is set down for consideration at 7.30 p.m. on a day on which the Bill is set down as the first Order of the Day shall, instead of being taken as provided by the Standing Orders, be taken on the conclusion of that day's proceedings on the Bill, and may be proceeded with, though opposed, notwithstanding the provisions of any Standing Order relating to the Sittings of the House."
This Resolution was on the Order Paper on Friday, and with the object of meeting the convenience of certain hon. and right hon. Members, it has been held over until to-day. The origin of the Resolution was explained by me last Wednesday in reporting the very useful work that the Committee representing all parties of this House had done in connection with the allocation of time for the Committee stage of the India Bill. I understand that in addition to the time-table to which it agreed, the Committee unanimously resolved to recommend to the House to make such provisions as are contained in this Resolution. The first part of the Resolution empowers the Chairman to put in block clauses that stand together to which no Amendments are to be moved. It is a time-saving proposal. Instead of the Chairman putting Clause after Clause to which no Amendment is to be moved, he will put the whole series of Clauses together as one question. The second part of the Resolution provides for the common practice under a Guillotine Motion, when Private Bills are down for a day when the Bill under consideration is being discussed in the House, that those Bills shall be taken not at 7.30 but at 11 o'clock, after the day's apportioned work has been finished. It is proposed that when the India Bill is the first Order of the day, then Private Bills, put down ordinarily for 7.30, will be taken at 11 o'clock, or as near 11 o'clock as the business will allow.
I repeat the statement I made on Wednesday, that the Government have no intention of frequently resorting to the suspension of the Eleven o'Clock Rule. As a matter of fact, this will be resorted to only when it is obviously for the convenience of the House, and in order to make the time-table really workable. Only in those conditions will the Government propose to suspend the Eleven o'Clock Rule. When it is suspended, it may be that a matter of five or 10 minutes will enable the Committee to finish a particular section of the Bill; and it would be a great waste of time to the Committee if the Government were to say now that it did not matter as to where the Committee had got at 11 o'clock, the India Bill business would be suspended and the Private Bill business would be taken. It is for that reason that I say
we cannot promise that Private Business will be taken exactly at 11 o'clock. I would like to say in this connection that Private Business is a matter for the Chairman of Ways and Means, and our experience is that he always does his best to fit in that business so that it will not disturb any important business in which the House may be engaged, so far as it is possible to anticipate that. This Resolution, coming here with the unanimous backing of the Committee which has been of such great help in arranging the business, comes, I think, with very high commendation.

9.35 p.m.

Mr. LANSBURY: It is quite true, as the Prime Minister says, that my friends on the Committee have agreed to these proposals, but I would like to say, before they are finally carried, that I very much hope the Chairman of Ways and Means will find it not convenient to put down Private Bills on days when the Government of India Bill is being discussed. But that, of course, must be within his discretion. I would also like to say that the fact that we come to this voluntary arrangement in respect to this Bill should impress all the Members of this House with the fact that sooner or later—I hope sooner—we shall come to some agreement to review our procedure in a more drastic and thorough manner and so arrange our discussions as to make this sort of voluntary arrangement unnecessary. If this is carried through satisfactorily, I think it will help us to arrive at conclusions as to reforms of our Standing Orders which I think are very necessary in regard to many of the details in connection with the consideration of Bills.
Although I know that on occasion I can be as good a sinner as anyone speaking from one of these boxes and although it is true that some people might say, "Physician, heal thyself," it is also true that whatever other people agree to for the convenience of the House I hope I shall only be too willing to fall in with. I hope very much indeed that there will be a voluntary agreement, and I repeat, what I said the other day, that those who are considered, and who sometimes consider themselves, entitled to make rather long speeches on important questions will all put a self-denying ordinance on themselves. especially as we
shall be in Committee, and thus give everybody a fair and square chance.
It is in the natural order of things, I think, that, I was going to say a Churchill, but one of the descendants of one of the members of the Fourth party that was in existence a long while ago should be causing the sort of upheaval that he has caused, both in the party to which he belongs and in this House, but out of evil or what might be evil comes good, and if this proposal is carried through successfully, I should hope the House of Commons would tackle its whole procedure in a thoroughly workmanlike manner, so that we shall not need to have these voluntary arrangements as to how we should carry on our business.

9.39 p.m.

Mr. MANDER: I am fully in accord with the happy arrangement come to and should be very sorry to say anything to disturb it, but it does, as a matter of fact, have certain other consequences, because it will still further infringe on the small amount of time left to private Members. The Government has found it necessary to take all private Members' time this Session, and this Motion will have the effect that, if hon. Members desire to raise a matter on the Motion for Adjournment at 11 o'clock, one of the few opportunities left to them, and it so happens that under this arrangement the Chairman of Committees has put down a private Bill for 11 o'clock, they will be still further deprived of this opportunity. I want, therefore, to make an appeal to the Prime Minister to give still further consideration to the question that I put it to the Lord President of the Council before Christmas, to the effect that when the Motion for Adjournment at 11 o'clock for the purposes of private Members does operate, we shall be allowed to have the full half-hour, I have a question down on that subject for this week, and I hope that between now and when it is answered the right hon. Gentleman will consider whether in the circumstances he can make that concession.

9.40 p.m.

Mr. HERBERT WILLIAMS: I wish to thank the Prime Minister for the very dear and definite way in which he has met the point that I raised the other day, and made it quite clear that a
notice of Motion to leave out a Clause is to be deemed to be an Amendment for the purpose of paragraph (i) of this Motion. I would, however, like to draw attention to the second paragraph, because a number of us are a little perturbed at the changes in the law that are being brought about in Private Bill legislation. Some little corporation seeks some new power of a general character, and unless it is challenged, it may pass through Committee upstairs and become the law of the land in respect of that particular locality. Because Parliament has consented to that change in respect of one municipality in one particular year, in subsequent years every other municipality that comes along can get that power, a power which in general may interfere with the liberty of the subject.
It happens that there is one Bill this Session which contains more Clauses challenging the liberty of the subject than any other Bill brought forward for a long time, and I hope that if that Bill is opposed on Second Reading, as I believe it will be, it may be possible for the Chairman of Ways and Means to select a day for its consideration at 7.30 p.m. which will not be a day on which the Government of India Bill will be under consideration in Committee, because from some points of view these Private Bills raise issues of very much greater importance in their ultimate consequences than some of the Government Measures which may be presented. The liberties of the people can be whittled away through a chance Clause in a Corporation Bill, which is gradually extended until it becomes the general law of the country, and my sole purpose in rising is to express the hope that when any Bill raising an issue of major importance is opposed, it will not be put down to come on at 11 o'clock instead of 7.30 p.m., when it will have a chance of reasonable and proper consideration.

9.43 p.m.

Mr, C. WILLIAMS: As I raised this question of postponing private business the other day, may I be permitted to thank the Prime Minister for the assurance that he gave us that every endeavour will be made to take this business as near 11 o'clock as possible? I would like to emphasise the point that private business, if carried on until a late hour, is expensive, if I know my lawyers, and the cost
of private business is a very heavy burden on many people. I hope that under no circumstances will it have to come on at 11 o'clock, and that the Chairman's genius for finding better days will have the most complete. success. If so, we need not worry about it, but I wish to put it on record that, although the emergency is very great and must be met, and although I am entirely favourable to this agreement and hope it will succeed, there are some of us who hope this will not be a precedent to be used in future for putting private Members' business down at 11 o'clock. With regard to what the hon. Member for East Wolverhampton (Mr. Mander) said, it seems that every single influence that the Government possesses is used to rule the private Member out of general circulation in the House and put him into circulation only in the Division Lobbies. I feel that the Prime Minister sympathises with private Members.
The sooner we get away from the danger of private Member's rights being eliminated, the better it will be for the morale of the House. I am sure that the House will have to be reorganised in a great many ways in future, and when it comes I hope that the opportunity will not be taken to eliminate the private Member. I wonder if I may add a word on the matter of long speeches. I do not know that I err so much in the length of speech as in the frequency of speech, and I welcome the appeal which the Leader of the Opposition has made for short speeches, especially from the Front Benches. Sometimes when I hear the Scotsmen asking for something, or lawyers or Members of the Front Benches asking for something, I become suspicious, but I hope that on this occasion it means that the right hon. Gentleman
will lead us and that his appeal will not have been made in vain. On the Committee stage of a Bill Members want to seek the truth about the Bill and to have various points made clear, but if we are to have big three-decker speeches from right hon. Gentlemen and nobody else, it will be difficult to get all the information we want in order to deal with the Bill thoroughly. I congratulate the Leader of the Opposition on his appeal, and hope that he will follow his own advice.

Ordered,

"That the following provisions shall have effect with respect to the Committee stage of the Government of India Bill:

(i) If the Chairman is satisfied with respect to a series of Clauses that no Member desires to move any Amendment to any of those Clauses or to move the postponement or omission of any of them, he shall put the question that those Clauses stand part of the Bill without putting the question separately as respects each Clause; and
(ii) Any Private Business which is set down for consideration at 7.30 p.m. on a day on which the Bill is set down as the first Order of the Day shall, instead of being taken as provided by the Standing Orders, be taken on the conclusion of that day's proceedings on the Bill, and may be proceeded with, though opposed, notwithstanding the provisions of any Standing Order relating to the Sittings of the House."

The remaining Orders were read, and postponed.

Orders of the Day — ADJOURNMENT.

Resolved, "That this House do now adjourn."—[Captain, Margesson.]

Adjourned accordingly at Thirteen Minutes before Ten o'Clock.